


Succumbing

by Maleficar



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Dubious Consent, F/M, Hate Sex, Masturbation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-19
Updated: 2014-12-24
Packaged: 2018-03-02 07:07:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 24,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2803910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maleficar/pseuds/Maleficar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Solas lusts for a human, despising himself and her. He wants to be the air she breathes and the food that sustains her. He wants to be her sweetest poison and her bitter panacea.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

He wasn’t sure how to classify his emotions, and that disturbed him almost more than the actual emotions he felt. Solas paced the circumference of his room, clenching and unclenching his fists, trying to understand how it had happened. How he’d come to lust for a _human_.

Thoughts of her consumed him. He woke from fevered dreams to find his hand already on his cock, images of her fully formed in his mind. When he walked the Fade, the spirits trailing after him took on her face and called out to him with her voice. A desire demon had found him not two hours ago, cajoling him with promises of pleasure that _she_ would never make. That he didn’t want her to make.

With a feral snarl, he spun about and slammed his fist into the wall. It was an ill-advised gesture, a moment of rash instability that appalled him. He wasn’t like this. He didn’t lose control like this. Not over a human girl.

Woman.

A human woman with lush curves and pouting lips, with flashing eyes the color of a cloudless summer sky and hair black as midnight. When she moved, it was with the sinuous grace of a fighter, a woman born with a sword in hand, but she wasn’t a fighter. She was a mage. And though he was loathe to admit it, she was a mage the way he was a mage, with a profound and delicate understanding of the Fade’s energies. She was sensitive to its ebb and flow, and when she cast her spells, the braided energy held the kind of resonance that reminded him of his people.

He detested her for what she was. Despised her for what she made him feel.

And he could not get her out of his head.

She was there, even in his rage and his hatred, and he considered himself the worst sort of creature for his rancor. Because she didn’t deserve it. She held beliefs similar to his, though their opinions on elven culture diverged to the extreme. She liked him. Respected him. And he abhorred her because he _wanted_ her, because he _craved_ her.

When she came to him, asking him to accompany her and their companions on a quest in Emprise du Lion, he wanted to close his hands around her throat and squeeze. He wanted to deprive her of air the way she deprived him of sanity. Instead, he gave her a tight, pleasant smile and agreed to go with her.

It was misery. It was the interminable torture of Uthenera all over again. Every moment dragged by in aching agony. He was acutely aware of each passing minute. Not even the bitter cold could cause his erection to flag, and every time she smiled at him, every time she breathlessly thanked him for a barrier – and she always thanked him – he grew harder. Wanted her more. He wanted her to choke on his cock and thank him for the pleasure of tasting him. He wanted her hair tangled around his fist so tightly that her scalp ached and she cried out for mercy. He would give her the mercy of ecstasy, which, in its own way, was hardly a mercy at all.

He wanted to peel off her armor and discover the exact fullness of her breasts, the precise roundness of her ass. He wanted so much.

“Are you well?” she asked him after a fight against a red templar behemoth.

“Quite,” he replied, unable to say more for fear of revealing the state of his emotions.

She gave him that awful, genuine smile, the one that made her face shine like Mythal’s moon or Elgar’nan’s sun. “Your timing on that last barrier was perfect. I thought for sure I was going to take a shield to the face.” 

Cassandra wasn’t doing her job. He would castigate Cassandra later. If any injury befell their Inquisitor, it would be on Cassandra’s head, and he would destroy her as surely as he would destroy himself with this unhealthy obsession. “You are most welcome, Inquisitor,” he said, and she seemed content with that.

She turned from him and hurried to Cassandra and Varric, her hips swaying, rolling with each step. She moved like a courtesan, like a whore, and she didn’t know it. Couldn’t possibly know it. He wanted to grasp her hips in brutal hands and force her to dance against him, writhing on his cock until she screamed from pain or pleasure or both. He wanted to see her cheeks stained with tears of pleasure, wanted to brand himself on her soul so deeply that no other filthy, useless, death-bringing shemlen would ever come close to sating her needs.

He wanted to be the air she breathed and the food that sustained her. He wanted to be her sweetest poison and her bitter panacea. 

When they made camp that night, he sat awake in the tent he shared with Varric, and he imagined what it would be like to go to her. To throw Cassandra out of the tent and order the Inquisitor to strip for him. She wouldn’t obey. She would be too stunned to obey. So he would bind her hands with ethereal energy and tear her clothes from her body. He would cover her skin with his scent so that every creature in Thedas knew she was his, that she belonged to him, to the Dread Wolf, to Fen’Harel, the destroyer of an entire people.

And she would sing for him. He would make her cry out and gasp, drawing moans from her lips like honey from a hive. She would twist and writhe and he would give her no satisfaction, keeping her on the edge of pleasure for hours. Time had no meaning to him. He would teach her that, and he would be merciless. Only when she was delirious beyond begging would he let her come, and then she would come and come, shattering repeatedly until it hurt her. Until it made her ache the way he ached.

He left the tent in silence, without disturbing Varric, and prowled the edges of the camp, his eyes on her tent. If he hated her, he hated Cassandra more, because Cassandra kept him from his prey. Cassandra was the locked door on his Inquisitor’s house, the Keeper who kept the Dread Wolf at bay. She guarded his Inquisitor with sword and shield, and she would not suffer him to touch his Inquisitor if she knew the thoughts in his head.

If she knew his thoughts, she would have tried to kill him ages ago. Her mistake. If only the humans had Keepers of their own.

Circling the camp, he imagined a world where it was just him and her, the Herald, the Inquisitor, the one who had ruined everything by being in the right place at the wrong time. It was a world without Varric, without Cassandra, and in it, he fell on her with snapping teeth. In that world, he gave her so much pleasure it hurt her. He ripped ecstasy from her flesh with violent passion, and when he was done with her, she was limp and sated, eyes glazed with passion and adoration.

He loathed himself for that fantasy. For how much it aroused him. The mental picture of her spread on his bed with his come covering her body, a dazed smile on her face, made him ache. He ran his palm down the length of his cock like he had so many times before, and he imagined what her hand would feel like. The tips of her fingers callused from her staves, the rest of her hand soft, gentle. Would he have to teach her how to stroke him? He would be patient for her. He would try to be patient for her. He would guide her hand over his shaft and whisper her praises, telling her how good she was, how clever, how her humanity didn’t shackle her as it did her peers.

With a hoarse cry, he wrenched his hand away from his cock and strode into the darkness. 

There, in the frigid reaches of Emprise du Lion, he let the full force of his power flow through him, and he slaughtered the humans indiscriminately that night. He charred them, electrocuted them, left them smoldering husks. It did not satisfy him. The only thing that would satisfy him was the Inquisitor’s body bent beneath his own, her cries of pleasure in his ears.

In the morning, when the party came across his carnage, they were stunned. Horrified. He saw the fear and disgust in her eyes, and those two things made it so much easier to hate her. Of course she would see his work and call it a massacre. Of course she would despise what he was. 

But when they camped that night, she asked eager questions about the history of his people, her eyes wide and wondering when he told her of the peerless beauty of Arlathan. She thanked him before she retired, her voice soft and sweet and just a little husky, and he wondered what it would be like to make love to her instead of fucking her.

It wasn’t in him to make love. He didn’t have that kindness, not for her. Not for the people who had brought the final destruction of his. The elves may have started their downfall, but the humans had finished it.

The days passed like that, with him quietly lusting for her and hating her for that lust. She, with no idea, continued on in blissful ignorance. She touched him as they traveled, brushing her fingers over his arm, and her casual touches drove him to the edge of his sanity. He wanted to grab her by the shoulders and shake her, wanted to tell her to run, wanted to chase her, to pursue her, to catch her and drag her to the ground and take her in a wild frenzy of teeth and claws. Instead, he gave her benign smiles and watched her with hawkish intensity. 

When she stripped off her coat after a battle, he was taken by the ripe swell of her breasts, so much fuller than an elven woman’s. He hated and loved the difference. She bent to pluck tendrils of felandris from the earth, revealing her pert ass, and it was all he could do not to throw himself on her, rub against her, take her like that. She would demand he stop with shock in her eyes, but that shock would give way to mindless lust, senseless abandon, and then she would beg for him to never stop. He would fuck her the way only an immortal could: lazy and long, for hours on end, until she could no longer comprehend the meaning of words like days and months.

She stretched her arms over her head and laughed, pointing at a mountainous ruin. “Look!” she cried, elation in her voice.

There was a high dragon there, prowling the edge of the ruin, its gaze fixed on them.

They did not hunt the dragons. She did not allow it. They were beautiful and majestic to her, fierce and unspeakably precious in the way all deadly things were. When she saw them, she was captivated, and her marvel gave him a secret thrill. Would she marvel at him, too, if she knew how easily he could kill her? He had the slight build of his people, but his muscles were like silverite, and he could snap the bones in her neck with a casual caress. If she knew that power crawled inside him, would her body answer that knowledge with a flood of wet arousal?

The very idea of touching her and finding her wet made him mad with want. If he touched her and she rebuffed him, he could fuck her with cold dispassion – because he _was_ going to fuck her, to lure her to his bed with aching pleasure. It was as inevitable as the rising and setting of the sun. But if she was wet, if she wanted him, the tenuous control he clung to would snap. He would savage her, she would beg him for more, and when he left her bed she would whisper words of thanks and praise. 

“You have great respect for their power,” he said to her, coming to a stop at her side. He clasped his hands behind his back because if he didn’t he would grab her. She’d find herself on her hands and knees, her face pressed into the snow.

She turned to him with wonder in her eyes. He wanted her to look at him like that, except he wanted the wonder to be worship. He wanted her adulation and her fervor. He wanted her devotion. “They’re breathtaking,” she breathed, and he thought she would utter words of pleasure in that same tone. If he took her and she spoke during the act, she would exhale her words like whispers. “It’s like the Maker spun magic into physical form.”

The Maker. The _Maker_. When he was done with her, she would swear her oaths by Fen’Harel and no other name.

“It is a pity we cannot get closer,” he observed, already planning a way to make it happen. 

She sighed wistfully, her lips parted and beautiful. “Maybe when it slept?” She shook her head, her black hair feathering around her face, drawing his attention to the elegant lines of her cheekbones, to the delicate length of her jaw. It was easy to imagine her skin mottled blue and red with bruises left by his teeth, marks of his joy and ownership. “No, not even then.” She sighed again and gave him the sweetest, most dreamlike smile. “I’m content to see them at a distance. I don’t want to hurt them, and I don’t want to risk any of you.” 

Her hand landed on her shoulder, and it was such a friendly gesture that it took all his self-control not to tear himself away from her. He didn’t want her friendship. He didn’t want any sort of affection from her, and it terrified and nauseated him. What he wanted was wrong, depraved. That made the wanting all the sweeter. 

They liberated a keep from red templars and demons the next day. There was a moment in the battle against Imshael that she fell. Imshael had transformed into a pride demon and struck her, backhanding her so hard she flew through the air and slammed into a wall. She lay there, motionless, and Solas realized in that moment precisely how fragile she was. He could lose the one thing he craved and desired above all others and he hadn’t even tasted her, hadn’t held her down and devoured her. Hadn’t fed his length inside her and ridden her until she collapsed. He hadn’t satisfied his curiosity, his need, and that was unacceptable.

His was the hand that delivered the final blow to Imshael, and his was the hand that delivered the Inquisitor to safety. He carried her on the journey back to Skyhold, assuring Cassandra he was more than capable, and when they arrived he deposited her in her room. While she lay in her bed and Mother Giselle fussed at her, he stole the key to her door.

He was benevolent. He didn’t return to her that night. Instead, he bided his time as she recovered. When he had her, he wanted her skin flawless so that he could paint it with scratches and bruises. She came to him several days later.

“Cassandra said you took care of me on the journey back here,” she said, leaning her hip against his table.

He kept his expression neutral, kept his gaze on her face, but all he wanted to do was study the slope of her waist into her hip, to soak in the jut of her breasts as she crossed one arm under them and glanced shyly to the side.

“Thank you,” she continued. “For looking out for me. I overextended myself.”

She hadn’t the slightest what it meant to overextend herself. Soon, so very soon he could almost taste the salty sweetness of her skin, he would show her.

“It is good to be aware of our limitations,” he said mildly, lacing his fingers so that he didn’t drag her into his lap and clutch her to him. So that he didn’t spear her hair with his hands and force her mouth to his in a kiss that would be nothing more than a brutal meeting of mouths meant to control her. “You have learned more of yours.”

She blinked, and he wondered if she would take offense. Then she laughed, bright and brilliant, and she nodded. “You’re right, of course.” Her nose wrinkled with her mirth. “This is why I need you, Solas. You keep me humble.”

Yes, he thought as she walked out of the room, her hips swaying, he would teach her humility. And he counted the minutes and the seconds until midnight. It seemed appropriate to him that he would finally have her under the light of Mythal’s moon.

Midnight came at an agonizingly slow pace, but when it arrived, he was at her door. He turned the key in the lock, slipping silently through the doorway. Shutting the door behind him, he locked it and then sealed it with magic. No one was going to interrupt this. If someone tried, they would die, and that would make the whole situation so much messier than it needed to be.

His obsession would end tonight. He would slake himself on her body, on her too round, too lush, too human body, and it would finally end.

Gaining the stairs, he tossed the key aside. Let her find it in the morning. A wave of his hand set the hearth blazing.

The fire from the hearth cast her in scarlet and gold, and she spun about, startled. She wore nothing more than a shift, so thin that the firelight made it transparent. His mouth went dry, his cock rigid. She stood before him proudly human, her body too finely toned to be elven. There was no way he could ever mistake her for an elf, even if he smothered the fire and blotted out the stars.

She was human. And he wanted her.

“Solas?” she asked, and her voice trembled. As it should.

In an instant, he was on her, driving his fingers into her hair, dragging her mouth to his. He devoured her. Her gasp of shock was enough for him to slide his tongue past her lips, and he tasted her deeply, the way a parched man drinks of water. She was divine, reminding him of elven wines long gone from the world, and he wanted to destroy her for it. 

Then her passivity vanished. She wrapped her arms around his neck as though she craved him as much as he craved her, clutching him to her as if she wanted him to climb under her skin. Soon enough, he would be. He would press so much pleasure on her that she would shatter and he would take up residence in her remains, filling the cracks with his presence and gluing her broken spirit back together. He would be her end and her beginning.

Her tongue fought his, pushing it from her mouth. She tasted him, and he allowed her, amused by her daring, before he spun them about and shoved her against the wall. Grasping her shift, he tore it, rending it from her throat to her belly, and she cried out, turning her face from his.

“Solas,” she gasped.

Ignoring her, he pushed the shift from her shoulders. It pooled on the floor and she was finally, gloriously naked. His hands ran over her, hard and firm, his nails raking across her skin. If only they were claws to scour her, to mark her, to leave no doubt in anyone’s mind that she was his. 

Pinning her to the wall with his hips, he ripped his tunic off as he rubbed his cock against the juncture of her thighs. Her whimper was a confused sound, and she was shaking her head as he cupped the back of her neck, curling his fingers in her hair to yank her mouth back to his. 

“We can’t,” she said before he stole her breath and breathed his own life into her.

“We can,” he returned, pulling free the laces on his trousers. His feet were bare, always bare, better to feel the energy of the Fade and Thedas’s thrumming life force. He kicked the trousers aside, grasping her hip with his free hand, yanking her head to the side with the other. 

He needed to punish her for her existence, to brand her with his own essence, to replace everything that she was with everything he had become. He ached, burned, to be inside her, and he hiked one of her legs over his. His cock brushed through wet curls, and he snarled, the sound vicious. Passionate. Full of need and desire. 

She wanted him. She was wet for him.

Roughly, he pushed inside her, driving into her, and she cried out in shock. Her hands pressed against his chest, shoving against him, but she couldn’t dislodge him. His will was greater than hers.

Her body was everything he’d dreamed of it being. His every imagining came to life in the way her cunt gripped him, the way she both strained toward him and pulled away from him. The feeling of her in his arms, pinned against him, trapped between him and the wall, fogged his brain and made it impossible to think clearly. A dangerous thing for them both.

There was nothing gentle in how he took her. His pace was brutal and demanding, like an animal in heat drawing pleasure from its chosen mate. She gasped with each of his thrusts, one hand scrabbling over the wall, the other clinging desperately to his shoulder. Her head fell forward, resting on his shoulder.

And then she bit him. 

He slammed her head against the wall, his hand around her throat. It took all his willpower not to crush that fragile column of muscle and bone. Gasping, she clawed at his wrist, but she didn’t stop moving against him. Her body rocked against his, taking him deeper, and a flood of sudden wetness coated his cock. His forcefulness aroused her.

“Never again,” he snarled. If she did that again, if she pressed that side of his nature, he knew he would do things he would regret. At the very least, she would end up bound to him for all eternity, his shame given human form.

“Solas,” she whispered, and his hand slipped around the back of her neck, holding her gently.

He kissed her, the touch light and sweet. Obscenely chaste in comparison to how he took her with ruthless savagery. The heavy touch of his hands would leave mottled bruises on her skin, and they would make her beautiful. No, resplendent. 

The need to make her come, to see her shatter with pleasure that he brought her, slammed into him. His hand worked between their bodies, his fingers searching for her clit. When he found it, when he stroked his fingers over it, she actually screamed, her body going rigid against his. Her body clenched around his, and he timed his thrusts to match the spasms of her cunt, drawing out her pleasure as long as he could.

As she came, he committed the picture of her face to memory. He absorbed the contraction of her brows, the way her eyelids fluttered shut, how her lips parted on a gasp. The sight of her pleasure seared itself into his brain, and he knew that he would be dredging up the image of her for years to come. When he was alone again, for he always ended up alone, he would return to this memory, to this moment, and he would pleasure himself with it.

Abruptly, he jerked away from her. He pulled out of her, and she let out a shocked, desperate wail. “Why—” 

He grabbed her by her wrists and all but threw her on her bed. Stalking toward her, moving with a predator’s prowl, he gave her a feral, wicked grin. No. He knew the expression on his face couldn’t be called a grin. It was a bearing of teeth, nothing more.

With wide eyes, she stared at him, backing away from him on the bed. “Solas, what—what is this?”

“Sin,” he replied immediately. What else could it be? “Desperation. Madness.” He descended upon her like a winter storm. He forced her into another kiss as he knelt beside her, and she denied him, turning her head as much as she could. His lips slid over her jaw, her cheek. His teeth found her earlobe. Exhaling against her ear, he continued. “Fucking, Inquisitor. I’m going to take you again and again. I’m going to have you in every way a man can have a woman, as many times as it takes. By the time I’ve finished with you, you will be destroyed. Ruined.” 

She shuddered against him, her breath hot on his neck. A strange sound escaped her, somewhere between whimper and moan, and it made his cock ache for her. Throb for her.

“I’m going to crush you and rebuild you,” he growled, bearing her down to the bed. He pinned her arms above her head, settling the weight of his body over hers, pressing his hips between her legs. She resisted, but only for a moment. Then her body went soft under his, her legs spreading to accommodate him. His cock rubbed through her slick folds, searing himself with her heat. “You have bewitched me, ensnared me, and I cannot escape the pull of you.” He swept his hand from her hip to her breast, his thumb brushing her nipple. 

With a shuddering groan, her body arched under his. “This isn’t right,” she whispered.

“I have fucked you countless times in my head, Inquisitor. I have taken you under starry skies on frozen planes, in the full light of day on sandy beaches. This is more right than anything I have ever done.” His mouth descended on her neck, to the place where the column of her throat sloped into her shoulder, and he fastened his lips there. His teeth scraped her skin, and as he pulled at her flesh with his mouth, his hand brushed over her hip, pushed between their bodies. His fingers delved between her legs.

She was shockingly, obscenely wet.

“Please.” She whispered the word like it was shameful, and it _was_ shameful. 

Something in him broke.

Binding her hands with magic, he slid down her body, licking, suckling, tasting. Her flesh was sweet and yielding, warm and soft. When he touched her, she jumped and shivered. She cried out quietly and rolled her hips against him, seeking desperately what he could give her. Whatever she wanted, he denied her. If she turned into a caress, he moved away. If she balked at a touch, he pressed it on her. He didn’t do this to tease her, he did it to punish her. To make her pay for being everything he should never want.

“Maker, Solas,” she groaned, and he lunged up her body, grasping her chin in cruel fingers.

“Do not bring that name into this,” he hissed, and her eyes went wide. “If you must swear by the gods, beg for Fen’Harel to have mercy on you, for I will have none.”

Her eyes widened even more, a flicker of fear and uncertainty crossing her face. But then his fingers were between her legs, stroking, petting and that fear melted into pleasure. She gasped and keened, hips rolling against him as he delved two fingers into her, and fear melted into unadulterated delight. She was hot and tight, dripping with her arousal. 

He wanted to hate her more for it, wanted to despise her for wanting him. “Beg me for this,” he commanded her, stilling his fingers inside her.

The wail that issued from her soothed something ragged and awful inside him, but woke a darkness that went beyond a cloudy midnight. 

“Beg me, and I will let you come. Beg me, and I will bring you the kind of pleasure your kind has dreamed of for centuries.” He curled his fingers inside her, and she let out another cry, and the cry ended on a sob, but she didn’t beg.

Her strength was breathtaking. It was infuriating. He would break her on the anvil on his will, reduce her to nothing for his own pleasure and edification. His self-control wasn’t entirely gone, just mostly, and he could hold out, torturing her with pleasure. Time slid past them, the minutes a slow, grueling agony. 

“Do you think you can outlast me, _da’len_?” he asked when the minutes had built to an hour, appalled at his own use of the elven endearment. But it made her gasp again, made her whisper his name like a plea, and it was almost enough. “Beg me,” he commanded again. “Tell me what you want with explicit clarity, _vhenan’ara_.”

And then he spoke to her in Elvish. He whispered filthy things in her ear as he watched her body shudder and quake. She didn’t need to understand his words to know that he was being unspeakably crass. The phrases he used were as base as any, not fit for use with one’s lover. But she wasn’t his lover, she was his obsession, his burning passion, that craving that crawled under his skin and tore at whatever was left of his soul.

By the time he was done with her, his soul would be gone.

When he tired of detailing the things he’d do to her body, she was panting, her every breath making her breasts bounce. He watched them fixedly as he began to make her promises. Vile, twisted, disgusting promises. He would sit on a throne again, one day, and she would be at his side. He would tear down the world for her. He would make a new one in its place. The secrets of magic would be hers if she would only beg him for the release he knew she craved. He would detail the mysteries of the world for her, lay bare the awful truths of Thedas’s history, and she would be the only person alive, aside from him and Mythal, to know them.

“Solas, please!” The cry exploded out of her as though unbidden. She sobbed softly. “Please, Solas, I can’t bear this!”

“Tell me what you want,” he murmured in her ear, shifting his fingers so they rubbed against her, so they tantalized her, so they gave her just a little but not nearly enough.

Another strangled sob came from her. He brushed his lips over her cheek and found her skin wet. “Fuck me,” she whispered, voice hoarse. “That’s what you want from me? A fuck?”

His laughter was dark. Dangerous. “I want your soul, _ma vhenan_. I want everything you are surrendered to me.”

She choked on her god’s name, swallowing it back as her hips arching into his hand. “Take me.” It wasn’t a plea. Those words were resignation, not desperation. “Damn you, take me. Fuck me. Use me.”

“You’re not begging yet.” He withdrew one finger from her, and she wailed with distress, with need. In Elvish, he said, “Only when you beg, precious creature, only when your desperation and your need crushes your will. Beg me to take you, to break your body with pleasure. I will give you everything. The world will lay itself at your feet and you will be as we once were.”

She trembled. She shuddered. Her body spasmed with tension and need, and to cause her greater agony, he withdrew his other finger until only the tip remained inside her. And the minutes dragged on. She couldn’t fathom his patience, could never begin to comprehend how little time meant to him. 

“Solas, please.” Her voice was a broken sob. “Solas, I can’t bear this, please, please, Solas.” She was close, he thought, and he brushed his thumb over her clit to see. She cried out, her body twisting against his. He drove his finger back into her and delighted in the feel of her cunt clenching around him, greedy and demanding, pulling him in deeper. Words spilled past her lips, but they were senseless, meaningless things.

He spoke the Elvish word for _please_ in her ear, and she was so broken to his will that she immediately took it up like a prayer. The liquid sound was a balm to his scarred heart, and he leaned over her, kissing her like a lover might.

Two fingers pressed into her, stroked her, built her passion higher as he drank her pleas through their kiss. Tears were streaming from her eyes, just like he wanted, and when he pulled back to look at her, her eyes were dazed, pupils swallowing up the pretty blue of her irises. He danced with her on the knife-edge of pleasure, keeping her there until her silent tears became shuddering sobs that wracked her whole body.

“I need you,” she whispered at least. “I’m not whole without you, I need you inside me, please, Solas, please.” And then, again, she whispered the Elvish word.

Suddenly, her use of Elvish was too much to bear. It was sick. Wrong. The fact that she even dared to whisper the words of his people infuriated him, and it didn’t matter that he’d told her to use it. Fury coursed through him, ate him up inside, consumed whatever was left of mercy and goodness in his soul. 

He rolled her onto her belly, forced her to her knees. With her wrists still bound, she couldn’t pull herself onto her forearms. She was stretched before him, back arched, ass in the air, and he fell on her like vengeance. Covering her, he forced her legs wide, pressed his cock inside her, drove into her without mercy or compassion.

Beneath him, she cried out his name. He barely heard it. 

The heat of her stole his breath. She burned almost as hotly as the firestorm inside him, all rage and despair and unbearable self-loathing. Grasping her hips in cruel and unforgiving hands, he braced her as he withdrew from her tight body. The muscles of her cunt rippled and tightened, clinging to him, and she let out a soft wail. When only the tip of his cock remained inside her, he paused.

“Breathe,” he told her, and it was the last bit of kindness in him. She took a breath, and he took her.

He took her the way an animal takes its mate, with brutal abandon and no care for anything but his own pleasure. Their coupling had nothing to do with lovemaking, could barely be called sex. It was filled with his fury, and that rage was a burning blanket that wrapped tightly around them, strangling them both. He hated her as he took her, punishing her with ruthless thrusts. Her body was a tool, a vessel, perfect and beautiful and he despised it because it was not elven. 

The inconsistencies in his logic were staggering, piling on top of him and crushing him as he bent over her body and crushed his chest against her back. He found her abhorrently rounded ear and licked it. Cupped her oversized, human breast. Pinched one of her nipples to tell her how terribly formed she was. She moaned senselessly, throwing her head back. 

Ecstasy was etched on her face in stark, beautiful lines. Her lips were parted, forming a pretty circle, and he slipped his thumb between them. “Suck,” he told her, and she did, her mouth pulling on his thumb as if she were sucking his cock. He praised her in Elvish and damned her in her human tongue, rocking into her in time with his words, using his thrusts as punctuation.

“Come undone,” he commanded, dragging his thumb across her lips, making her flesh slick with her saliva. He dipped his hand between her thighs to where his cock pounded into her. Collecting the moisture of her body, brought it to her lips, and she sucked his fingers eagerly, a harlot willing to please. And how she pleased. “Come undone, _vhenan’ara_. Give me this one thing.” His head dropped between her shoulder blades and he closed his eyes. “Give yourself to me.”

She did. 

She let go with a cry, and even though his eyes were closed, he knew, beyond all doubt, that it was the last beautiful thing he would ever experience. The world was ruined and he had ruined it just as he had ruined her. 

He made good on his promise to take her in every way imaginable, turning her, repositioning her, taking her again. The minutes bled together, blurring into a meaningless progression of pleasure and agony. 

She was a shuddering wreck as he neared his peak, her body splayed beneath his, her breasts upthrust as she arched to meet him. But it was what she whispered as he drove into her that broke him. There, at her weakest, at her most vulnerable, she did not cry out for her Maker. She murmured the name of Fen’Harel, and he was undone.

He thrust into her, his rhythm ragged and lost, and he succumbed to her. His release shocked him. It echoed through the whole of his body, his skin tingling from his scalp to his toes as he emptied his seed into her body. It was the most violent, aching experience of his entire life, as though every ounce of pleasure he’d felt and every measure he’d feel again was suddenly dragged through him in a single moment.

When his orgasm subsided, her body was still rippling around his, tremors shaking her. He withdrew from her, running his hands over her sides. She blinked up at him, expression dazed. 

“Solas.” Her fingers touched his cheek, a soft caress that he did not deserve. 

“ _Ir abelas, vhenan’ara_ ,” he whispered, and he kissed her mouth with a tenderness he had thought beyond him. “Forget this. I have wronged you. Forget this.” He wove his magic in a delicate web about her, drawing the memories of him from her mind. 

When it was done, when her eyes were shut and she slept, he used his discarded tunic to wipe her clean. He wrapped her in her sheets, her head on her pillow, and he left her room in a darker silence than he had entered it. Naked, he moved swiftly through Skyhold to his own rooms, entering to don a new pair of pants. Clothed, he went to the parapets, clutching his tunic and trousers in his hands. He drew on the power of the Fade, setting fire to the cloth, and he released the embers into the wind.

As he watched the sun rise, he reminded himself that it rose on a world that had destroyed his. It was easy to hate her for that, but he would always love her for that one moment when she had whispered his name.


	2. Chapter 2

Sunlight spilled across the Inquisitor’s face, waking her, and she realized two things in rapid succession: first, that she was naked and she never slept naked. Second, she hurt everywhere. Her muscles ached as though she’d abused them greatly, her thighs most of all, and there was a rawness between her legs that sent terror skittering down her spine.

She bolted upright, and every overextended muscle screamed in protest.

Ripping the sheet from her body, she lurched to her feet and stumbled before her mirror, reaching out with one hand, blindly. Her fingers slid down the glass before the friction caught and held her skin, and she stared at herself in the glass. 

There were bites and bruises all over her body, long and curving lines of purple and scarlet that looked like fingers. Her breasts were mottled with color, her belly and thighs splashed with garish hues. A shuddering breath fell from her lips, her mind recoiling in horror from the sight – and from the feelings those bruises conjured. Instead of revulsion, lingering satisfaction suffused her, as though she’d gone to bed with a lover whose desperation and need had made him just a little too rough.

But she had no lover. She was too busy, the Inquisition’s mission too important. A lover was a beautiful distraction she didn’t need.

How, then, had she come by these bruises? 

Twisting her body, ignoring the twinge of protesting muscles, her gaze followed the marks that bracketed her hips, the stripes left by nails on her back. Her breath came in faster and faster gasps, and she appalled herself. Though she was frightened because she didn’t know who had left the marks on her body, they aroused her. Brought with them fleeting flashes of memory. Heat and need. A mouth crashing against hers, demanding. Insistent. 

Arousal coiled low in her belly, making her gasp. Shaking, she slid one hand between her legs and found herself wet and tender. 

What had she done? _What had she done?_

Dreams were dangerous things for mages – a constant battlefield. Had she summoned a demon in her sleep? Had she, Maker forbid—

She recoiled from the oath with such ferocity that she jerked away from her mirror. Why did swearing by the Maker bother her so much? It never had before. She’d never been particularly religious. Though she enjoyed the ceremony employed by the Chantry, though she sang the Chant and obeyed its tenants, she found the concept of an absent god demanding worship silly. If she swore by the Maker, it was because she expected no reprisal for abusing his name. But now… Now, she expected reprisal.

But from whom?

Shuddering away from that train of thought, she returned to the more immediate issue. If she had summoned a demon to her, she could be possessed. 

“Blast,” she murmured, turning away from her mirror. She moved toward her wardrobe. Stumbled over soft cloth.

Going still, the Inquisitor regarded the white cotton of her shift. Somehow, she knew what it would look like before she picked it up. 

_Fingers in her hair. Mouth against hers. Surprise and disbelief writhing around a thread of arousal so bright it burned._

She held her shift in both hands, letting it hang from the shoulders.

_Desperation in the form of a kiss. Brutal, punishing, achingly hard, painfully needy._

_A tangle of limbs, the tight press of bodies._

Whoever he was, he’d torn her shift open. And she’d _loved_ the raw, visceral power in his form. Just looking at the shift made her body tighten and quiver with anticipation. The man, creature, demon, spirit – whichever had been in her room – had fractured her memory with pleasure. But she still remembered the ecstasy. 

She would go to Solas.

No. _No_ , not Solas. She couldn’t explain to Solas that she’d apparently done unspeakable things with a spirit and didn’t even remember. He would judge her, find her wanting, and for some reason she couldn’t bear that. Vivienne. She would go to Vivienne, and she wouldn’t even mention demons. If a Knight-Enchanter couldn’t tell on sight if she was possessed, then surely she wasn’t.

She dressed in her most conservative armor, hiding her entire body. There was no way for anyone to see the mosaic of colors splashed across her skin under the yards of fabric and light pieces of plate. 

Inexplicably, she paused in front of the mirror, running her fingers over her sash. There was a bite mark there, on her belly, and for some reason it spread warmth through her whole body. The warmth brought with it a flash of memory – a man biting down her as he pressed his fingers into the heat of her body, as he rubbed her wetness and his seed over her thighs. 

She really hoped she hadn’t summoned a desire demon, and she fled from her room.

An hour later, she found herself playing a round of Wicked Grace with Vivienne, Bull, and Varric. No one in Skyhold, excepting Solas, was better suited than those three to knowing if she was _wrong_ or not. But Vivienne, as she deftly won all their money, didn’t say a word about the Inquisitor being off, and Bull didn’t mention demons, and Varric wheedled and needled her about her burgeoning affection for the Commander.

Except that affection was gone. It had been burned away by something darker, more brutally primal and real. Whatever she’d felt for Cullen had been a spring breeze. The ache between her legs, that satisfying throb, was a dark summer midnight. 

A week passed. No one said she was in any way _wrong_. She didn’t wake up from black outs holding knives and surrounded by puddles of blood. No one died mysterious deaths. The bruises and scratches faded, and with them went many of her concerns. 

Then the dreams started.

Night after night, the dreams took the same path. She wandered through lush landscapes and impossible buildings. Geometries that defied her expectations rose around her, dizzied her, left her breathless with wonder and awe. As she walked, her clothing dissolved into light, leaving her nude and barefoot and shimmering. Magic pressed all around her, a warm caress.

Inevitably, she followed the twisting corridors to a bedroom. Unlike the rest of the building, the bedroom was dark. Dangerous. Filled with sensual promise edged with an untamable wildness that called to something elemental in her soul. She never _wanted_ to go into that dark room, but she had no choice. Her feet carried her inside, and that was where he waited for her.

Cloaked in shadows, he ran his hands over her shoulders, her arms. He drew her against his naked body, and he felt like a winter storm. Impossible. Unavoidable. Destructive. Seductive in the devastation he could bring. She trembled at his touch, cowed by his power and yet aroused by it in equal measure. Magic pressed against her, all around her, making her skin tingle like it did when the Veil was thin.

The first time, she struggled against him. “Demon,” she accused, knowing the wending roads of dreams were wrought with terrors.

He let her go.

The second time, she tried to know him. “Spirit?” she inquired, but he did not respond.

The third time, she asked, “Are you the one who used me so well?” That night, he destroyed her with pleasure. She cracked and shattered, losing herself under the knowing caresses of his hands. His tongue painted strange magic on her skin, and she sobbed in wonder, clutching at his shoulders, trying to draw him to her. 

He was not gentle in his lovemaking. He was intense, primal. Everything about him was earthy passion and desire. But for all that, she couldn’t help but call their sex lovemaking. Under the possessive touches was an urgent sense of fear, as if he, whoever and whatever he was, despaired of her turning away from him. As if he craved her and sought to use sex to bind her to him. It was working.

Sometimes, he held her, and he was so overwhelmingly strong that he all but crushed her in his arms. There was desperation in his embrace, as though he couldn’t stand the thought of her leaving him. Other times, he spread her on pillows and silks and learned her body with his fingers and mouth. Once, he sang to her in a liquid, lilting language she couldn’t comprehend. 

She woke from those dreams gasping, her body clenching around nothing and yearning to be filled. Those mornings, she drove her fingers into her cunt and stroked and played until she came a second time, sometimes a third, and even then the burning need to be filled didn’t fade until the sun died a bloody death behind the mountains on the horizon. And then it started all over again, night after night. 

Hoping exhaustion would chase away the dreams, she collected Varric, Bull, and Solas, and went red lyrium templar hunting. Except instead of templars, they found Venatori and undead all across the Exalted Plains.

There was bliss in wearing herself down physically, a mindless state of fatigue that left her weary to her bones but smiling. 

“You’re nuts, Boss,” Bull said one night around the fire as Solas ground the blade of his staff against a whetstone and Varric scratched at parchment with his quill. 

She gave him a tired smile. “Thanks.”

“No, that’s not a compliment,” he said, scooting closer to her. “What you’re doing, it’s not healthy.”

The steady _shck shck_ of Solas’s whetstone faltered briefly before resuming.

“People do this sort of thing when they’re running from something.” Bull dipped his head toward her, almost crowding her. How strange, then, that she didn’t find him very large. He lacked something, some indefinable sense of presence. He was enormous but he didn’t consume a space. In that way, he was very small, and she found it baffling. “What’re you running from?” 

Of all people, he would notice, she realized. His Ben-Hassrath training wouldn’t let her behavior slide as innocuous. “Nothing,” she lied.

“You want to push yourself, that’s fine, but you’re on the road to breaking yourself.” He put one large, warm hand on her shoulder and studied her with his good eye. In the flickering firelight, she saw his concern, and she loved him for it. “There are easier ways to break yourself. Ones with safety nets and watchwords.”

While she reeled from the implications of his offer – Bull, interested in _her_ , in doing things with _her_? – Solas cleared his throat. “If you have a moment, Bull, pawn to H4.”

Bull slowly turned his face from her to Solas, and she was still so stunned she almost missed his expression flicker with annoyance. “Arishok to G6.”

What she didn’t miss at all was the sudden malevolence snapping in the air between them.

“Pawn to H5. Careful,” Solas murmured, still sliding his whetstone over his blade.

Pressing her lips into a thin line, she thought this would be the perfect moment to escape. Then she wouldn’t have to worry about answering Bull’s incredibly… Well. She didn’t know what words to use to describe his question. She just didn’t want to answer it. If avoidance was a sport, she was its champion. Direct confrontation made her ill. Cassandra claimed that the dreadful anxiety any sort of decision brought her was what made her a good Inquisitor, but Cassandra would claim she was a good Inquisitor even if she decided to wear her boots on her hands and bleat like a nug.

She started to scoot to one side. Bull’s hand tightened on her shoulder, and she froze.

“You’re the one who lost his mage,” Bull growled, and for a moment, she wondered if Bull meant the mage on their invisible game board or something else entirely. Because Bull’s one eye flickered briefly toward her, and there was suddenly so much _more_ to their chess game than she could ever hope to understand.

She wasn’t very good at chess. If the thought of calling the Maker for blessings didn’t make her sick to her stomach, she’d bless Cullen for his strategies. 

Then Bull chuckled. “Arishok to G5.”

“Queen to F3,” Solas said without hesitation.

“Oh, clever. Almost trapped my Arishok.” Bull sounded too smugly pleased with himself. “Ben-Hassrath to G8.”

She glanced at Solas, but Solas’s expression was as neutral as ever. She couldn’t see any indication of feeling one way or another. She did, however, wonder what Bull saw when he looked at Solas. She wondered what she saw. A teacher, yes, for he knew so much. A friend, perhaps. Maybe he was a safety net, too, offering protections from the Anchor. 

There was something more there. Something strange, lacking definition, that twisted beneath her skin whenever she looked at him. She’d avoided him when she thought herself possessed, afraid more of his reaction than Vivienne’s if only because she could predict Vivienne’s. Solas was some unquantifiable presence in her life, one that defied every expectation she had, and she didn’t like things and people she couldn’t categorize. She liked boxing people up, labeling them, and sticking them on a shelf in neat little rows. 

“Mage takes pawn, threatens queen.” Solas swept the whetstone down the blade and then set it aside, stretching his fingers.

Her breath caught on a memory.

_Fingers delving into her, long and fine, first one, then two. Curling, stroking, stretching, stroking. A broken gasp – hers. Dark laughter – his._

Her body rippled and tightened, heat flaring between her legs. 

Bull made a sound of disgust. “Arishok to F6.”

“Knight to C3.” Solas sounded almost pleased with himself. “You’ve developed nothing but your queen.”

He put a subtle emphasis on the word _queen_ , and a shiver of heat stole through her. Bull’s hand squeezed her shoulder, and another memory washed over her. 

_Words whispered in a soft, euphonious language. Promises, every last one of them. Impossible to understand but still there, hanging between them as fire scalded her, scoured her, seared her flesh._

“Are you two going to be at this for the rest of the night?” Varric asked, sliding smoothly into the breath of silence that followed Solas’s move. His voice tore her from the memory, and she bit her cheek. “Because while you’re having some weird intellectual _thing_ , I’m sure the Inquisitor and I would both really like to sleep.”

Bless Varric. She wanted the chess match to end, immediately. There was an undercurrent passing between Solas and Bull that she couldn’t make sense of, making her incredibly uncomfortable. The skin on the back of her neck kept prickling, and the fact that her body was crying out for release with Bull’s hand on her shoulder wasn’t helping anything. And those memories. Those fractured, heated memories. She wanted to drown in them.

Bull shot Varric a scowl. “Don’t get cocky,” he said, turning back to Solas. “You’re still one Tamassran down. Tamassran to C5, by the way.”

Solas opened his mouth. Paused. “Hmm. I will need to consider.”

“You’re done, then?” Varric asked.

Chuckling, Bull leaned back. He hadn’t taken his hand from her shoulder. Pitching is voice low, he said, “So, Boss. About safety nets.”

“I’m fine, really,” she said quickly, quietly, touching her fingers to the back of his hand. “I appreciate your concern, Bull, truly, but I don’t need… I’m fine.”

Bull didn’t look convinced, but he wasn’t the sort of man who would push unless someone asked him to push. He fit easily on her shelf with labels like _sharp-eyed_ , _caring_ , and _thoughtful_ alongside _extremely deadly_ and _deserves gratuitous amounts of respect._ “If you’re sure, Boss,” he said, but she knew he was saying _I’m watching you anyway._

She slipped out from under his hand, stretching her arms above her head. “I’m going to bed, then,” she said, forcing cheer into her voice. She’d think about Bull and Solas and their bizarre chess match later. “Sleep well, all of you. We’ve a busy day tomorrow, I’m sure.”

She ducked into her tent, tied the flap shut, and all but tore off her clothes. Dropping to her knees, she clapped one hand over her mouth and drove the other between her legs. She was soaking, her arousal coating her thighs. Those memories. Those strange, fractured memories were like fire in her mind.

Without hesitating, she pushed two fingers into her slick cunt. Her thumb brushed over her clit and she started a brutal, demanding rhythm, like one her dream lover would use. She imagined him in the darkness, squeezing her eyes shut to block out the tent and the Plains, imagined him stroking her, caressing her, whispering those strange syllables against her ear. He’d bite her earlobe, the fingers of one hand biting hard into her hip, desperate to keep her, to hold her, to ensnare her while he pleasured her with the other. 

A whimper escaped her, muffled by her hand. 

His teeth would find the tendons in her neck, nipping, scraping, and he’d curl her fingers inside her like she was curling hers, finding that sweet, perfect spot. He’d whisper something to her and laugh, and then he’d take one nipple into his mouth, drawing deep until she screamed. He loved to make her scream, loved to pleasure her until she sobbed and tears streaked down her face. And she delighted in it, in the ownership he had of her body.

She twisted her hand, pressing her fingers deeper, harder, faster. Her body tensed and coiled, her toes curling.

The sight of Solas’s fingers stretching flashed in her mind, and that memory broke her. She moaned long and low into her hand as she came, her body bearing down on her fingers with sweet release. She curled into herself, touching her head to her knees as her pleasure subsided, and she trembled. 

Something was very wrong with her. So very, very wrong.

When she dreamed that night, she collapsed to the floor of the impossible building. She wrapped her arms around her knees, drawing them to her chest, and squeezed her eyes shut. 

“Why are you doing this?” she whispered, breaking inside. “Why won’t you leave me alone? I don’t want you. I don’t want you. _I don’t want this_.”

Her dream lover didn’t come to her, but she heard his voice echoing through the halls in song. The cadence and pitch was familiar. So familiar. But she couldn’t place it, and she spent the night weeping.

The next morning, she snarled and snapped at everyone who approached her – which for her meant ignoring everyone. First Varric, who asked if she wanted a cup of what passed for coffee in the field. She looked him dead in the eyes, sleep still blurring hers, and turned away. Solas inquired after her rest. Said she looked run down. She actually snarled at him, and the mystified look of shock on his face almost placated her.

Bull was smart enough to stay out of her way.

At least until they tripped their way up to a Fade rift. Greater terrors, despair demons, and a rage demon all poured out of the rift at once, and it was several minutes into the fight before she could manage a spell, which wasn’t like her at all. And then when she fought, she missed. Her spells went awry or wouldn’t cast. The Fade kept slipping through her fingers, and the more frustrated she became, the more terribly she performed.

Dumb luck kept them alive.

After the rift was closed, Bull grabbed her by the elbow and hauled her away from Varric and Solas, ignoring the former’s shout of concern.

“You want to tell me what the fuck that was about, Boss?” Bull snarled.

She blinked at him, trying to focus on his face, but she couldn’t. She felt like she hadn’t slept at all. She felt hounded and chased. Like she was a fraying bit of cloth that was almost undone. 

“I can’t,” she whispered, not even bothering to pull free of his grip. “I can’t.”

“Why not?” 

Because it was demons. It was demons, she knew it was demons. She’d pretended too long that it wasn’t when it was. If she told him, if she revealed that to him, to someone who was terrified of demons and who hated them, what would he even do to her? Would he just kill her for fear she’d been possessed? “I just can’t.”

“You’re breaking,” he said gently, everything about his manner softening. He slid his hand up her arm, pressing his palm to her cheek. “I can help you.”

She almost said no. But then she said, “Yes.”

The rest of the day, Bull stayed close to her side. He forced her to go slow, to take her time. When they came upon a group of enemies, he made her talk through their plan of attack. For the most part, her plans left her out of the fighting. She was grateful. By the time they made camp, she didn’t think she had any mana left in her. She felt hollowed out and dry in a way that wasn’t healthy.

“Get in,” Bull said gently, propelling her toward one of the tents. “I’ll bring you some jerky and we can work this out of you.”

She nodded, dropping her staff on the ground before ducking into the tent. She had enough presence of mind to unbuckle her armor, which she set aside, and then she collapsed on her back on the bedroll, just breathing. In and out. In and out.

Fractured visions clogged her mind. The hot swipe of a tongue. A body caging hers. Her on her hands and knees, a man driving into her, branding her. Her breathing sped up, her body warming.

“—you doing?” Solas’s voice, rising steadily in volume, each word enunciated with whip-like clarity. Varric murmured something indiscernible and Solas snapped, “She is not a creature to be caged or bound.”

“Something’s eating at her,” Bull said, and she saw his body outlined against the tent flap. “You can talk to your spirits about fixing her all you want, but I’m actually going to do something. And that’s the difference between you and me, Solas. You walk the Fade and you _talk_ when someone has to get things _done_.”

She felt a crackle of magic in the air when Bull slipped into the tent, caught sight of Solas’s face – a mask of stormy fury. She’d seen that expression before, hadn’t she? Illuminated by firelight, looming over her as he – no. 

A dream.

A twisted vision.

“You look like shit,” Bull said, settling beside her. 

“Feel like shit,” she said, too dried up to be anything but honest.

He settled his hand on her belly. Just held it there, and there was something incredibly reassuring about the weight of his hand. The warmth of it. “You want to talk about it?” he asked, offering her a stick of jerky.

Shaking her head, she turned away, refusing both offers. “Can’t.”

“This thing I do? It’s about communication,” he said, suddenly leaning over her.

_Too big, too many muscles. Harsh features, not aquiline._

“You have to talk to me,” he murmured as she reached for his face, curling her fingers around his jaw. “You can’t use me to punish yourself.” 

So she only mostly lied. “It’s the dreams,” she whispered, drawing him close. He propped himself over her body on one arm, and sheer size of him made her feel safe, like he was a wall against the rest of the world. “I can’t escape the dreams.”

“Nightmares?”

Let him believe they were nightmares instead of aching fantasies. “They torment me.”

“So you thought you’d come out to the Plains, beat yourself bloody, and fall into a dreamless sleep.”

“Better than a Holy Smite from a templar. Better than purging myself of mana.”

“You’ve done a mighty fine job of that.” He shifted his arm closer to her, stroked his fingers over her cheek. “I’ll help you, Boss.” Her heart squeezed, almost bursting. “But I’ve got one condition. Things get too weird for you, you don’t like what I’m doing, something hurts too much, you say _katoh_ and it all stops. You got it?”

Half of her wanted to swear that she wouldn’t say it no matter what he did. The other half of her was sure she’d break at the first touch. Pushing both those halves of her together, binding them back into one person instead of a fractured soul, she nodded. “Katoh. Got it.”

He stripped her slowly with fingers that were painfully gentle. Everything he did, he talked her through. “I’m going to touch you here,” he’d say, and then he did. “I’m going to kiss you there,” he’d say, and then he would. When she was naked, he bound her arms loosely above her head and knelt between her thighs. He gave her compliments – real ones. Told her how strong her arms were from her staff work, tapped her chest and told her she had good breath control. Then he cupped her breasts and groaned, “Your tits are fantastic.”

All around them, the air crackled with tension. 

Not tension, she thought blearily as he started stripping away all the protective layers she wore. Magic. Not hers, though. The Veil drew tight around them, stretched to its limit. She could feel the individual threads of it against her skin, pressuring her in a way that Bull never could. 

His lips touched one nipple. He growled with delight, and she gasped at the light touch. It felt good. Better than good. When his tongue ran over her skin, she unwound just a little more, and she softened. And yet there was something missing. It wasn’t in the way he touched her, because he certainly knew precisely how to make a woman pant for him. It was something more basic. 

His hands swept up her legs, over her inner thighs. His thumbs spread the lips of her cunt, and he muttered something in qunlat, the consonants harsh and cacophonic. In her own tongue, he said, “When I’m done with you, you’ll be screaming for your Maker.”

A breathless laugh bubbled past her lips. “You can try,” she said as something inside her protested. She couldn’t scream for the Maker. Why couldn’t she do that? The bizarre idea that her oaths were meant for someone else scuttled through her mind. Then she shoved thought aside in favor of feeling.

He rubbed the pad of one finger over her clit, and her body arched, her eyes fluttered shut. Heat lanced through her, throbbing and needy, but somehow not quite what she wanted. His finger was too… something. Delicious, certainly, but it didn’t scratch the itch the way she wanted it to.

One of his fingers pressed against her entrance. “Tight,” he groaned. Then he chuckled. “Wet, too.” That finger slid into her, and she bit her lip against a moan. “Easy,” he murmured, pushing into her just the slightest bit before pulling out. He went deeper on the second thrust, and even though it felt incredible, it still wasn’t quite right. “You’ve got to let go, Boss.”

_Long and lithe, delicate and fine, pressing, probing, making her gasp and shudder and moan._

His finger was too thick and broad. He rubbed against her ever so sweetly, but her body wanted something else. Something finer, more delicate.

And thoughts of the Maker still chewed at her. Why couldn’t she make her oaths to the Maker?

He was stroking her now, slow and sure, leaning over her. His mouth found the edge of her jaw, brushing sweetly over her skin, as he said again, “Let go.”

She couldn’t. Why couldn’t she? It wasn’t because he was doing something wrong. He was doing everything so perfectly right. Her body quaked beneath his, trembling on the edge of an orgasm she knew would be strong enough to curl her toes. But part of her insisted he was too big, too broad, and that part of her searched fervently for a word. Not his word, not katoh. She had no intention of stopping him when she was so close.

A single word.

Just.

One.

Word.

It came over her in a rush. _Fen’Harel._

“Katoh!” she gasped, kicking at him. Her foot connected with his knee and she shoved herself off his fingers, twisting away. “Katoh,” she sobbed, throwing herself into a corner of the tent as he stared at her, bewildered. “Katoh, katoh, katoh.” She chanted it, whispered it, curled around herself and shuddered from the loss of his warmth as much as the shock of that single word. _Fen’Harel_.

The name meant nothing without context, and she had no context. In spite of that, she knew she couldn’t let Bull keep touching her.

He shuffled up to her on his knees. “Boss,” he said softly. “Hey, Boss.” She shook and trembled, lifting her head to meet his gaze. “What broke you?” He reached for her, and she tumbled into his arms. “What was it?” He plucked at the sash that bound her wrists, freeing her hands.

She pressed her face against his chest. “Fen’Harel.”

Bull said nothing, just held her tighter. Protecting her. From the Dalish’s Dread Wolf? From some spirit pretending to be him? Was any spirit insane enough to masquerade as the god credited with locking away two pantheons? 

“What about him?”

“I don’t know,” she said, wrapping her arms around his neck and clinging to him. His warm hands rubbed her shoulders, her back. “I don’t know, I just… I remember…” She sucked in a deep breath. “He told me to beg Fen’Harel for mercy because he would have none.” 

Bull leaned back, tipping her chin up so he could study her face. He wore an expression that looked like death. “Boss, you better be real fucking honest with me here. Did someone hurt you?”

She opened her mouth to say no, but she realized she wasn’t sure that was the truth. All those bruises and scratches had been terrible to behold, but she’d felt as though they were badges of honor. So she ducked her head, shaking it slowly. “I don’t think so.”

“Boss—”

“I woke up covered in bruises and bites,” she said abruptly. “They were everywhere, but I couldn’t remember how they got there.”

“Someone hurt you.” His voice sounded like murder. “Someone hurt you and you forgot it.” 

She shook her head. “No. I mean, yes. Well. No and then yes.” She sucked in a breath, releasing him and pushing her fingers through her hair. “When I looked at them, I felt… insanely hot and bothered. Actually.” Her brows drew together. “It was kind of like Cole. When Cole makes you forget. You have the evidence of his presence, but there’s a hole where he’s supposed to be. Most people, they fill that hole in with easy explanations. It’s harder to trick a mage.”

“Because of the demons,” he grumbled.

“Precisely.” She sucked her lower lip into her mouth, thinking. “So, I had these bruises. I thought I’d summoned a demon to me in my dreams, that I might be possessed.”

“You’re not.”

“I’m not,” she agreed. “But then I started having dreams. About this… presence. I accused him of being a demon, and he ignored me. Then I asked if he was a spirit, and he ignored me again. The third time, I asked if he…” She felt heat crawl up her cheeks.

Bull cleared his throat. “If you’d summoned him and he’d fucked you?”

“Ah, not in those exact words. But yes.”

“And?” 

She shivered with delight in his arms. “He did the most amazing things to me. Night after night.”

“Until?”

“Until I started to realize how I was breaking every rule we’re ever taught. You don’t indulge spirits. You’ve heard Solas talk about it. Doing… things like that… in the Fade… It attracts demons.” She coughed, the sound almost delicate, and she couldn’t believe she was having this conversation, naked, in the Iron Bull’s lap.

Then it occurred to her there was no one else she could have this conversation with.

“That’s when I got scared.”

“Ah.” He exhaled the word, nodding. “And that’s when it started wearing on you.”

She nodded, too. “Last night, I just broke down in the dream. But he didn’t touch me. He left me alone.” She paused, thoughtful, trying to remember all the little details. “I think he was singing a lullaby. I… Whatever he is, he didn’t mean to hurt me. I don’t think he knew that what he was doing was actually hurting me.”

Bull was silent for a long while, but there wasn’t any condemnation or judgment in that silence. Just consideration. “So, what, you think he’s Fen’Harel, Boss?”

She snorted and shook her head, finally drawing away from him. She reached for her clothes and started pulling them on, aware that he was watching her. Oddly flattered that he was. “What use has Fen’Harel for a human?” she asked, throwing him a wry look over her shoulder. 

“True. You good now?”

“I think so. I… I’m sorry about…” She gestured toward the bedroll as she fastened her breast band. “That.”

“You don’t apologize for that,” he said, shifting back to the bedroll and stretching out on it, as if he had already figured out she didn’t want to be alone. “Your head got twisted up, you worked it out. I’m just sorry we couldn’t have more fun.” He paused, lifting a brow, a grin stretching across his face. “We still could.”

She shook her head as she joined him on the bedroll, laying on her back beside him. He propped his head on his hand and watched her. “No. I need to figure out who it was. If it was that spirit or someone else.” She fell silent, her eyes narrowing.

“It wasn’t Cole,” they both said at the same time, having come to the same conclusion. 

Laughing, she shifted closer to him, and he settled on his side, draping one arm across her belly. It felt like protection. “Get some sleep, Boss. Try not to dream.”

“I’ll try,” she said.

She dreamed. Of course she dreamed.

When the strange building had formed fully around her, she turned in a slow circle, for the first time really seeing it. It had echoes of the architecture Solas had once attributed to Arlathan. It was beautiful.

Footsteps rang against the floor. Her spirit, she thought, and she waited for her clothes to disappear in curls of light. They didn’t. Instead, her spirit came up behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist. He held her loosely and pressed a chaste kiss to her ear. “ _Ir abelas_ ,” he said.

Her eyes went wide. “You’re an elf!” she gasped. And that was when she woke up, throwing herself upright.

Bull rolled to the side, grunting. “You got a reason for waking up like an explosion?”

“An elf,” she hissed, whirling on him, pushing him to the bedroll. She braced herself against his massive chest, hanging over her face, and his eyes went straight to her breasts. She didn’t have it in her to be annoyed. “He’s an elf. My spirit is an elf.”

“That possible?” Bull asked, mostly awake but still blinking sleep from his eyes.

“Maybe he just likes elfy things,” she said, leaning back, tapping a finger to her lip. She waved her hands through the air dismissively a second later, scrambling for her armor. “Let’s get up. I’m hungry. I’m starving. We’re done here, anyway, and I want to get back to Skyhold.”

She clambered out of her tent a few minutes later, Bull following her. Varric and Solas were already up, working with the Requisitions Officer at the camp to make breakfast. Everyone was looking everywhere except at her and Bull. Except for Solas. He watched Bull with the oddest expression on his face, like he was moments from exploding.

And here she thought they were getting on.

Abruptly, Solas snapped out, “After careful consideration, knight to D5.”

Bull laughed, dropping onto a bench beside the fire and accepting a bowl of gruel or something like it from Varric. 

She peered at Varric, and Varric met her eyes a second later. He glanced from her to Bull and back again. She stared at him. Mouthed, “Are you crazy?”

“That’s what it looks like,” he mouthed back.

Stricken, she reeled away from him. Of course that was what it looked like. Of course everyone would see it that way. Of course they were all wrong but no one would believe her protests – or Bull’s, because he was too good a man not to correct people. Great. In a day’s time, the whole Inquisition would think she had ridden the Bull.

“Arishok takes pawn at B2,” Bull said cheerfully, and then he gave her the same damn look that Varric had, as if to say, _They all think I fucked you last night._ He followed it with another look that said, _I almost did_.

Her answering glare clearly told him to get fucked.

“Mage to D6,” Solas returned, his eyes narrowing.

Understanding hit her. She couldn’t believe it. Solas had made the chess match a pissing contest because he thought Bull had sex with her. It made approximately no sense. He had no reason to care. None at all. She was an adult and could make her own choices, and if she had chosen to sleep with Bull, it wasn’t Solas’s place to have an opinion. _Why does he have an opinion?_

“Arishok takes tower. Check.” Bull gave Solas a baffled look. “What are you doing, Solas?” 

Ah, he just caught on, too. She felt a certain measure of pleasure that she’d figured out what Solas was about before Bull. _But why does he even care?_

“King to E2.”

“Andraste’s tits, the both of you,” Varric muttered, shooting her another look. This one said, _This is your fault._ It also implied a whole host of things, first among them that the Herald of Andraste shouldn’t be having sex with anyone.

She scowled, and her scowl said, _I didn’t sleep with him!_

“Alright. Tamassran takes tower. Your last tower, by the way.”

“Pawn to E5.” No one in Thedas had ever sounded so smug.

Bull stared at him, stunned into silence for a moment. “Really?” he asked around a mouthful of oatmeal. “I’ve got my whole army bearing down on your king, and you’re moving a pawn?” He sighed heavily. “Are you even trying anymore?”

Solas’s lips pulled back in an expression that could barely be called a smile.

_Teeth bared, predatory walk. Not a grin, a baring of teeth. Animalistic. Wolfish._

_She wanted him. Needed him. Was so unspeakably wet for him._

The memory caught her off guard, and she swayed where she sat, almost missing what Solas said. “Think about it, my friend.” There was nothing friendly about how he said those words.

Bull watched Solas as he shoveled oatmeal into his mouth, the tension in the camp only growing. The two had eyes only for each other. It would have been comically romantic, if not for the frigid expression on Solas’s face.

Varric sat next to her, facing away from the fire. “You really didn’t sleep with him?” he asked.

“Oh, by the Dread Wolf, would it matter if I did?” she snapped back, turning so her words wouldn’t carry. She didn’t think about the oath until after she’d spoken it. Was baffled by how easily it had come to her lips.

Solas stiffened. As if he’d heard, his head swung slowly toward her. She looked pointedly away, fixing a frosty glare of her own on Varric. 

“Would it?” she pressed. Then she gasped. “If you’re writing a story about me like you did about Hawke, Varric…”

“Are you kidding? No one would believe the shit that’s happened to _you_. Hawke’s life was boring by comparison.” Varric snickered. “You getting together with Bull would actually be the most relatable thing in the whole book. Everyone wants to experience the dangerous unknown.”

She groaned. “Well, we didn’t.”

“That’s good, because then I’d have to wonder how you fit that—”

She lifted a hand wreathed in lighting, ready to threaten him with gratuitous bodily harm, at the same time Bull said, “Alright, Solas, I’ve thought about it. Ready to finish this? Ben-Hassrath to E6.”

“Knight takes pawn at G7,” Solas fired back. “Check.”

“Mm-hmm. King to D8.”

“Queen to F6. Check.”

She whispered to Varric, “Doesn’t Solas putting Bull in check repeatedly mean he’s winning?”

“I don’t know,” he whispered back. “I’m only good with cards.”

“That’s because you stack the deck.”

“Not untrue.”

“And now my Ben-Hassrath takes your queen. You’ve got no towers, you’re down to a single mage. Too bad you wasted time moving that pawn to—” Bull broke off. His jaw worked for a minute. “To…” A look of incredulity passed over his face. “You sneaky son of a bitch.”

She was suddenly very invested in the outcome of their match. “What?” she asked. “What’d he do?”

Solas gave Bull an arch look, insufferably smug. “Mage to E7. Checkmate.”

Bull let out a growl of frustration. Shook his head roughly.

“He won?” she asked, wondering what that meant in terms of their underlying battle. She looked at Solas. “You won?”

“Nice game, mage,” Bull grumbled, his expression suddenly distant, like he was replaying the whole thing in his head. 

“And you as well, Tal-Vashoth,” Solas said cheerfully. 

She spun around in her seat, so her back was to the two of them. “Varric.”

“Inquisitor.”

“Did they just have a pissing contest over me disguised as a chess match?”

Varric grunted. “One of them certainly did.”

“He doesn’t even like humans,” she hissed.

A shadow fell over them. She craned her head back to find Solas standing over them, a bizarre expression on his face. “I neglected to greet you this morning, Inquisitor. _Ir abelas_ ,” he said, and then he turned away.

She went completely, utterly still. Her bowl of oatmeal dropped from her fingers. Her spirit wasn’t a spirit at all.


	3. Chapter 3

Solas left the camp because he could not stay. Not when his emotions threatened to undo him. Not when they clogged his throat every time he looked at her and saw Bull’s massive hands sliding over her skin.

It wasn’t right. He had no claim to her. But she was _his_ in his bones, in the depths of his very soul, and to think Bull had lain beside her, touching her, sampling the finer pleasures of her body and hearing her impassioned cries, enraged him.

“You let her go,” he hissed as he loped easily across the Plains. “You made her forget. You let her go.”

But he hadn’t let her go.

She had crawled into him, taken up residence inside him as he wanted to do to her. When she had whispered his true name that night so many weeks ago, she had shattered him completely, broken him into billions of pieces. In the spaces between the shards of himself, she became the glue that held him together.

He craved her, burned for her, ached to have her again, but he leashed his desires. He told himself over and over in his head, as though repetition could be convincing, that a hundred times one night was enough. But a hundred times every night would never be enough.

And she had given herself to Bull.

He had felt them through the Fade, the Veil stretching across her naked skin as Bull bent over her, kissed her, caressed her. Spirits had whispered to him of how Bull had peeled her out of her clothes with a gentleness Solas didn’t possess. The pleasure of her body sparkled and rippled through the air, and his own mounting fury had rubbed the Veil raw.

The fact that demons hadn’t poured into the camp was a miracle, as was the fact that Bull still drew breath. Solas’s wrath was a smoking coal under his skin, making his flesh smolder with the heat of his rage. He ran himself ragged on the Plains just to keep from sweeping into Bull’s dreams like vengeance. It would be easy to break the Iron Bull’s mind, and in his darkest moments, Solas built simple, effective plans to that end. 

They were never carried out. She would never forgive him, and he had done her enough wrongs.

When he finally returned to Skyhold, his rage had almost burned away. It was still there, hiding beneath the surface, but it wasn’t violent. It wasn’t deadly. He’d rationalized away the worst of it. Bull hadn’t had the slightest idea who lusted for the Inquisitor, and Solas had no claim to her. 

That was his mantra. _I have no claim to her._

She slipped quietly into his room while he was painting Celene, Gaspard, and Briala on the wall, his brushstrokes a kind of meditation. Her energy crackled over his skin like licks of lighting, his cock hard and throbbing for her as soon as he inhaled her scent. When he set his palette down and turned to her, brush in hand, she had slight smile on her face, her eyes bright with hope.

He remembered the curl of her lips when he took her. He’d had her back to his chest, had twisted her face so he could see her, could drink kisses from her lips, and she had smiled just like that as she moaned his name and begged for more.

“I did not expect to see you, Inquisitor,” he said, though what he meant was, _I did not think you would ever want to see me again._ Some part of him was still unsure if she had realized her dream lover was him. He had chosen his words that morning deliberately, had spoken them with the same cadence to make the subtle suggestion. She had dropped her bowl of oatmeal, presumably in shock, but that meant nothing.

It was better to proceed as if she didn’t know.

“But you’re back,” she said breathlessly, and he remembered how breathlessly she’d whispered his name into the darkness as he filled her.

“So I am.” 

As silence stretched between them, he turned back to his painting. She didn’t need his attention, after all. She had Bull. Or Cullen. Solas had heard she danced with the latter at Halamshiral, and he contented himself with fantasies that he would have cut into that dance and stolen her from the Commander. They were just fantasies, though, ephemeral dreams that he would never realize. 

He heard the sound of her boots on the stone floor, and it took all his strength not to tense. He refused to turn, to look at her, to soak in the beauty of her too round, too lush, too perfect body. Instead, he focused on his painting. But the act of dragging his brush over a wall could never consume him the way she did.

“You left.” Her words were soft, tentative, just like she was. Hesitant and gentle. Full of hurt.

This, then, was what it felt like to love an impossibility. She could not know who he was and all of what he had done, and he could not forgive her for being born human. Yet her sorrow tore through him like one of Sera’s arrows, and the wound it left behind was ragged and gaping.

Swallowing his pain, he forced a tight smile to his face. “I came back,” he said, still not turning to face her.

“Are you really here?” she asked.

No, he wasn’t. He was months long gone, still tangled in her arms, still craving her with every breath he took. But of course she did not feel the same. And why should she? He had never given her any indication he cared for her, and the one time he had… It had been unspeakably wrong to go to her as he did. More wrong was that he would do it again. He knew that now, as she stood behind him and he feigned interest in his mural. There would come a point where he would be too full of wanting her, and his self-control would shatter. They would find themselves in her bed, against her wall, rutting like beasts.

Turning to her, he gave her a small smile. “I am wherever you are, Inquisitor,” he said.

Her eyes went wide at his words before she turned away from him, ducking her head to hide her expression. He wished she wouldn’t hide from him, but he understood why she did.

“I’m glad you’ve come back,” she said, and then she was gone. She took all the beauty from the room when she went, leaving him in an ugly pit.

That night, he dreamed of her. He fought the pull of the fantasy as best he could, but he had no control over his actions. Or, maybe, his mind knew too well what he wanted. He fell onto her with kisses like fire, ice and lighting crackling from the tips of his fingers to leave her gasping and moaning. She arched into him, her skin bright with magic, and he took her with brutal abandon, losing himself in the depths of her body.

“Only you,” she whispered in Elvish when she came, and that was enough to shatter the dream.

He woke, gasping, his hand on his cock. Covering his face with his arm, he started stroking himself, picturing her face cracked with ecstasy and lined with pleasure. Long, slow pulls against his cock that left him breathless. He still wondered what her hand would feel like. He hadn’t given her the chance to touch him that one night. Would she be as sweetly hesitant while stroking him as she was in everything she did? Would she pause after every motion to study his face and his reactions? 

Ah, yes, she would. She would be so thoroughly attentive that she would have him on the edge in mere seconds. She would unravel him with light caresses and firm tugs.

Groaning, he arched his back, thrusting his cock into the tight circle of his fist. She would laugh at that, the sound delighted and bright, laugh at the sight of him breaking under the pleasure of her touch. The tips of her breasts would brush against his legs, make his fingers clench in her hair. There was no possible scenario where his fingers weren’t in her hair, scratching against her scalp, holding her, directing her. Would she care? No, he expected she would enjoy having someone master her. Her eyes would sparkle and glitter, her lips curling in a small, tentative smile, and then she would touch her tongue to the tip of his cock, tasting him.

With an oath, he came, hot jets of seed splashing across his belly. All his muscles were rigid, the pleasure searing him from head to toe. He hadn’t come so violently since spending inside her. Perhaps because every time since, he forced himself to imagine elven women instead of her. Elven woman with too-large eyes and slight frames, beautiful in a willow way, but not as rounded and earthy as a human woman.

He swore. His cock was half hard again, aching for her. Need built beneath his skin, and all the sweetness of his release evaporated in the face of the burning desire to take her under his body, hold her down, and fill her with his seed. He wanted to paint it over her thighs, her ass, her belly. Use the scent of it to mark her as his.

Groaning, he pushed his fingers into his eyes until light bursts against his closed lids. He hated himself, hated her, hated the world for being so unfair. _Did you not make it so?_ His traitor mind whispered the question in the darkness. Agitated, he rose from his bedroll and began pacing his room.

He felt her through the Fade.

Freezing, he stood beside the small table in the center of his room and reached for her dreams. They glittered golden and green at the edges of his vision and pressed against his skin like open-mouthed kisses. 

Feral hunger sharpened his every instinct. He hadn’t slipped into her dreams since the night she took Bull into her bed, afraid of what he might do. Afraid of the demons he might call to them. Afraid he would find her broken and sobbing once more, even after his apology. But now he was too wound up to deny the siren call of her mind.

_She begged for you to stop last time,_ he reminded himself. _This will be a violation._

He went to his bedroll anyway, closing his eyes, and focusing on her. On the memory of her soft skin yielding to his every touch. On the memory of her gasps, her moans, her senseless pleas for more. On that single Elvish word falling from her lips. He painted a picture of her face in his mind: the expression she wore as she came for him, all shock and pleasure and wicked delight.

In her dream, she sat surrounded by books. Her hair was a tousled mess, piled on top of her head, and she had at least three quills sticking out of her haphazard bun. Ink smudged her cheeks. Stained the tips of her fingers. She was bent over parchment. “Have to finish for the First Enchanter,” she muttered, and he, leaning in the doorway, allowed himself an indulgent smile.

She had been her Circle’s finest, brightest mind. It showed in her magic, in the subtly with which she manipulated the Fade.

“A treatise?” he asked, striding toward her.

She barely glanced at him. “Go away, Melanen,” she muttered, turning to one of the many open books. The page was blank. “I have to finish this. It’s due tomorrow. If I don’t, they’ll kick me out.” 

He circled her, studying her. Then he slipped behind her and settled his hands on her shoulders. “I am not Melanen,” he said, not even debating keeping up the charade. Letting her think he was someone else wasn’t acceptable. If she did not know who he was, that was fine, but he couldn’t abide her thinking he was someone he was not.

Beneath his hands, she shifted uncomfortable. “Who are you, then?”

This was the strangeness of dreams. The threadbare reality of them. Anxiety made her dream about a paper unfinished and supplied a mystery character to seduce her from her task. He bent over her, brushing his lips over her too round ear as his hands curved over her shoulders to cup her too round breasts. She gasped, the quill dropping from her fingers. 

“Demon,” she accused.

Such a shame, he thought, that mages had to dream so lucidly. “I am no demon, _vhenan_ ,” he murmured against her ear. He licked her earlobe and caught it with his teeth, tugging gently until she gasped again. His fingers danced over the intricate lacings of her robe, pulling them loose so he could slip his hands inside and cup the heavy weight of her perfect, awful, wonderful, terrible human breasts.

Her head dropped back, resting against his shoulder, and her back arched. “My spirit,” she breathed as she pressed herself into his hands.

How he wanted to hate her. How he wanted to destroy her with his body, break her until she couldn’t exist apart from him. He wanted her will bound to his, and—

_No_.

Disgust curled in his belly and he withdrew his hands, unable to bear touching her with such thoughts echoing in his mind.

Her hands caught his wrists. “You aren’t a spirit.”

They were treading dangerous ground. He should not have come. He should not have given into the pleasure of a fleeting moment, the desire to touch her. “Release me,” he said softly, feeling a darkness rising up within him. 

She ignored his command, her fingers tightening on his wrists and crackling with electrical energy. The need to overcome her overcame him. He wrenched his hands free, spinning her about and clapping one hand over her eyes so she wouldn’t see him. Then he kissed her, hard and demanding, his tongue forcing its way into her mouth to see if she still tasted of those ancient elven wines. She did.

That kiss destroyed him. It reinvented him. It made him less and more at the same time. “I am addicted to you,” he whispered against her lips in Elvish.

“I know you,” she said with wonder in her voice.

He kissed her again to silence her, drawing her out of her chair and into his arms. A slight tug on the Fade and she was blind, her eyes wreathed with darkness. That didn’t stop her hands from cupping his face, her fingers so gentle and delicate and, yes, just as he had imagined them. The tips were callused and rough as she slid her hands over his cheeks, but her palms were softer than clouds. He wanted those hands wrapped around his cock. Or pressing against his back. Ah, to have them pressed against his back, clinging to him as he thrust into her.

Catching her hands before they could touch his ears, he pressed a kiss to each palm and took her mouth again. He tried to be gentle. He tried not to consume her with the kiss. He failed.

With his body, he crowded her against her table. They hit it hard, books tumbling from table to floor in a crash. Neither cared. He devoured her with his mouth, claiming her with it, using his tongue and lips to write an essay on his ownership of her and her body. When he released her hands, she grasped his tunic, his shoulders, dragging him close.

He snarled softly, hating her robes and how they kept him from pressing against the heat of her sex. Grabbing the fabric, he yanked it roughly to her hips. Then her legs were around him, pulling him against her body, and he felt a moment of peace in the cradle of her thighs.

This was all he wanted, to lose himself in her body. To have her. To possess her, bound and chained and needy before him.

An image of Bull’s hands on her filled his mind, of Bull’s hands parting her thighs. Of Bull’s fingers sliding into the sweet heat of her cunt, stroking, caressing, making her cry out with delight.

“Mine,” he growled against her lips, dragging her flush against him and rubbing his aching cock against her. “You are mine, only mine.” His teeth caught her lip as he ground himself against her and she gasped, moaned. He choked on his own name, refusing to give it to her though he wanted it on her lips more than he wanted to draw breath. 

Had Bull finished inside her? Had he spilled his seed into her body and drawn out to watch it slide down her thighs? 

Fury blinded him as he pressed her against the table, leaning over her, covering her with his body. _He_ would have her now, not that uncouth, unthinking barbarian. He would take her, show her passion like she’d never felt – beyond what he’d given her last time. What he’d taken from her last time.

As his lips burned a path down her neck and he pushed her robes from her shoulders, she whispered, “I know you. I _know_ you.” Her hands were on his ears before he could stop her, pleasure tearing through him, the sweetest agony. Her thumbs rubbed the points of his ears, shredding his control, his sanity, and she gasped, “Fen’Harel.”

He tore himself free of the dream, waking with a gasp. Somewhere above him, he heard Dorian shouting about the terrible state of the library. Josephine was attempting to placate him.

Wrapped in the safety of his bedroll, Solas grasped his cock roughly, aching and hard again, and tore a brutal orgasm from his body. His lips formed her name as he came, but it wasn’t enough. It was good, as good as before, but it wasn’t enough. His hand wasn’t her body, wasn’t her hot, trembling cunt milking him for more.

He dragged his free hand down his face and muttered an ancient oath. 

This addiction needed to end. He’d thought it beaten when he had resisted the lure of her dreams as he wandered the Plains, but it appeared he was wrong. He craved her more than ever, wanting her with a fierce desperation that terrified him.

He was only just bathed and dressed when she poked her head into his room. “Morrigan wants us to go to the Arbor Wilds.” She paused, her lips parting, and he imagined guiding her to her knees, urging those full lips to wrap around his cock. He would be gracious and let her learn him before he fucked her mouth, and she would look up at him with her beautiful, eager eyes and beg him to come in her mouth so she could drink his essence. 

Her lips moved. She was speaking, and he was just like some pathetic shem, focusing on the pleasure he could demand from her instead of the words she spoke.

“—come, too?”

“Yes,” he said immediately, not knowing what he was agreeing to, and he said the word with heat and need, as if she’d said, “I want to come screaming around your cock, clawing at your skin. Won’t you come, too?”

Her eyes went wide. Her cheeks flushed. He cursed himself a fool for that slip. 

Awkward silence stretched between them, a silence he refused to fill. If he did, that would be tantamount to admitting his gaffe. “Cole will be there,” she said at last. “And Cassandra.”

“Not Bull or Dorian?” It was a force of phenomenal will to keep the question casual.

She sighed. “I want Dorian to come, but three mages and Cassandra will drive Cassandra mad.” He wondered if she ever stopped thinking about other people and their needs. “And it’s not a very balanced party. Plus, we might need a lock picked. Who can say?” She flashed him a warm smile. “Varric says I’m not good enough yet. I keep bending the picks he gives me.”

“Perhaps one day,” he said, thinking of how clever her fingers would feel around his cock. One day, he promised himself. One day he would know. And he would subsist on the dreams of that day for as long as necessary. For eternity. 

And so they went to the Arbor Wilds, and he recognized the location immediately. His horror and discomfort mounted with each step as they battled their way to the Temple of Mythal. As they entered it. He whispered a silent greeting to his old friend, but she wasn’t in the temple, not anymore. Her spirit was long gone.

He bristled at Morrigan’s fumbling, bit his tongue against her foolishness. He tried to take pleasure in the Inquisitor’s stumbling, in her attempts to understand what was so far beyond her, but instead he felt echoes of the awe that was plastered across her face. She drank in the sight of the temple with eager eyes, and she approached every room with reverence. More, she constantly sought his opinion.

“You know of ancient things,” she said, brushing alongside him after they found his statue in the atrium. “Can you tell me about this place?”

He offered her no solutions, afraid that once he let one secret slip, they would all come spilling past his lips. She would hate him, then, and he didn’t think he could stand her hate.

She performed the rituals in silence, as if penitent, but he sensed her twisting the Fade as she walked the tiles. Each tile released a burst of magic that she braided around her own just like the ancient elves would have done. She followed the paths carefully, thoughtfully, taking her time even though Cassandra twitched with agitation. She performed the rites the way they had once been performed: with clarity of thought and dedication.

His ritual, however, gave her pause. She stood at the base of the stairs to the tiles, eyes fixed on the wolf statues standing guard.

“Odd that there would be a ritual for Fen’Harel in Mythal’s temple,” Morrigan said.

The Inquisitor didn’t reply. She gained the first step. Then the second. Each of her steps were slow and measured, and when she stood before the first tile, she turned to regard the wolf statues once more, a quiet curiosity on her face. When she reached out and touched one of the statues, he shuddered, as if he could feel that caress on her skin.

“I cannot,” Cole whispered. The women ignored him, but Solas did not. “I want so badly I burn, but the wanting is wrapped in loathing. I cannot touch her.” Cole’s eyes met his. “I will protect her from you.”

“Someone needs to,” Solas murmured, his voice barely audible.

Cole shifted closer to him. “She would tell you if you asked.”

“Tell me what?” Solas felt the swell of magic in the room as she stepped onto the first tile. It coalesced against his skin, rubbing against him like a full-bodied caress. Like she was naked in his arms, rubbing herself over him. Writhing for him, his cock trapped against the softness of her belly. He closed his eyes as if that would banish the sensation, but it only brought memories of her gasps and moans, a symphony of sensual pleasure that played across his flesh.

He was so hard he ached, and he was grateful that the heavy fall of his robes hid his erection.

“She would tell you about the Iron Bull,” Cole said, and Solas went rigid with sudden tension and anger. Cole dipped into his mind enough to have an idea of who he was, but it was a half-formed idea at best. Solas did as much as he could to protect his identity. “She would tell you he touched her, yes, brought her pleasure, but before it peaked with perfection, she remembered the word. The one word. Not _katoh_ but _Fen’Harel_ , and she said the first word to protect her from the second.”

Solas looked up, watching her tread lightly from one tile to the next, considering her path, considering her place, considering the roads of magic she traversed, and he felt relief. He had no claim to her – _Mine, mine, mine_ , Fen’Harel snarled – she could bed who she chose – _Me, only me_. But this was the sweetest panacea.

“Thank you, Cole,” he said softly.

“You needed to know.” Cole drifted away.

Fen’Harel watched the petitioner finish his ritual. Fen’Harel was waiting for her when she stepped on the last tile and concentration gave way to the satisfaction of a task completed. She didn’t know it, but it was Fen’Harel and not Solas who extended a hand to her as she climbed down the steps. 

“That was the last of the rituals,” Morrigan observed. “We should go quickly.”

As the others turned away, he turned to her. “How do you feel?” he asked.

She gave him a breathless, joyful smile. “It was like a journey into my own magic,” she breathed, her fingers tightening around him. “It was incredible. It was—” Her cheeks flushed and she looked away, and he smelled it on her. The arousal.

Her body knew what her mind did not. “You were quick and clever with Fen’Harel’s rites. I imagine he would have been impressed enough by you to turn his gaze from you,” Solas murmured.

The smile on her face faltered. “It’s the oddest thing,” she said.

“What is?”

“If he were to look at me, I… I don’t think I’d mind.” She looked bewildered by the revelation, and he, afraid anything else he said would push too far, released her. She hurried to Cassandra, still bright with her success, and he followed.

Had she come to the temple as an elf in the years before Arlathan’s fall, Fen’Harel would not have turned away from her. He would have summoned her after she left Mythal’s presence and he would have feasted on the pleasure her body for weeks. As it was, he was hard pressed to keep from dragging her into a shadowed corner, push aside her armor, and push into her. Or, better yet, to take her at the center of his ritual, her mind and magic lighting the tiles around them. Such a thing would have scandalized Mythal, but it would delight him to have her beneath him at the heart of such a sacred ritual.

Then came the Well of Sorrows. 

Then came the fear of losing her to Mythal. He paced the Well as she whispered heatedly with Morrigan, as they argued – though what she did could hardly be called arguing – over who should drink from the Well. _Not you,_ he wanted to say. _Anyone but you_. He held his peace, and so did Cole. That was no small miracle. He couldn’t begin to imagine how loud his mind screamed those five words.

She turned toward the Well and everything he had ever hoped for died as she bent before it. Horror stole his breath. He wanted to run to her, to catch her in his arms and cover her with kisses before revealing everything. Instead, every muscle in his body coiled so tightly he thought he might break.

_Turn away_ , he pleaded.

The very tips of her fingers touched the surface of the Well. There was a moment of calm, the same calm that preceded a storm. There was no howl of wind, and the brutal fall of rain had yet to begin.

And then she recoiled from with Well with such force he thought she might fall. Cassandra caught her, steadying her.

“You,” she gasped, trembling as she gestured to Morrigan. “It’s yours.”

His relief was so profound, he was surprised the temple didn’t react. Morrigan took the power, they fled through the Eluvian, and he watched her, his Inquisitor, with so much yearning it hurt him. Like with Imshael, so with the Well. He had almost lost her forever.

Perhaps he had lost her anyway.

She stopped coming by his room. She no longer took him when she ventured into the wilds of Thedas. The Well had shown her something, and it was with a certain sense of bitter irony that he felt it was the truth. Mythal would have gleefully revealed his duplicity, and she would have called it justice. 

Corypheus rose one last time, only to fall before the Inquisition’s might. With his defeat came the loss of the orb.

Even then, standing victorious, she was full of compassion. As if she knew what the loss of the orb meant. As if she could comprehend the way the fabric of the world was starting to unravel all because of him.

“It is not _your_ fault,” he said softly, sadly, the wind carrying his voice to her. “It was not supposed to happen this way.”

None of this was supposed to happen. The orb was not supposed to break, and he was not supposed to love a creature whose ancestors had sealed his people’s tomb. But there she stood, resplendent and beautiful, a graceful goddess full of kindness, and he knew that she knew. And her heart broke for _him_ , he who deserved it least of all. 

Before she could say anything to him, Cassandra called out. “Inquisitor!” She turned away, and in that breath of a moment, he left her.


	4. Chapter 4

He could not stay away. Solas had ruined so much, but this one thing he could make right. He went to her on the eve of her victory, sliding unseen through the celebration that filled Skyhold’s halls. He followed her to her room, to her balcony, and he watched her as she studied the setting sun. Alone. She would always be set apart. He had done that to her.

“Inquisitor.”

She wasn’t startled. Instead, she turned slowly. There was no surprise on her face when she saw him. There wasn’t even anger, and he wasn’t sure how to approach her because of it. If she had been furious, if she had raged at him, he could have dismissed her. He could have ignored everything she had done and marked her the same as all the other shemlen. Instead, she greeted him with quiet.

“There is no excuse,” he began.

“Not,” she said softly, “the words you should lead with.”

Her words made him seethe. How dare she, a mortal, dictate to him? How dare she demand anything from him? _How dare she?_ But she was not wrong. She was so right that he took a step forward, and he was delighted when she didn’t back away.

“I wronged you,” he said, coming to a stop before her. She wasn’t much shorter than him, so she didn’t have to lift her chin much at all to meet his gaze. There was so much strength in her eyes, so much power. It was breathtaking. _She_ was breathtaking, for she was the sum of her parts, the sum of her magical and political power, of her compassion and quiet generosity. The wholeness of her sent him to his knees, and she gasped. He took her hands in his and bowed his head against her knuckles. “I am so very sorry.” And he whispered her name into the wind.

“Solas…” A pause. A change in her that he felt in her hands. “Fen’Harel, I—”

“I raped your body,” he interrupted, tightening his hands on hers, needing the contact of her skin against his even though he knew he should release her. “And then your mind.”

Her fingers curled around his, and the caress was so unexpected that he jerked back, lifting his face to stare at her in shock. “Do you know what upset me the most?”

His list of wrongs committed against her was so long that he couldn’t possibly fathom which of them was the most egregious. “I could not begin to imagine,” he said, feeling trapped by her question. 

She gave him a wry smile – a _smile_ – and his breath froze in his chest. “That you took the most amazing thing I’d ever experienced from me and left me to wake up alone, covered in scratches and bruises. That’s the kind of sex I’ve dreamed about having.” He knew that. It shamed him, but he knew.

Then her words actually registered in his mind and he went still. 

“I wasn’t unwilling,” she said, tugging lightly on his hands. He rose, utterly in her power, completely captivated by her. 

“I hated you,” he said.

She winced. “Yes, well. Mythal’s Well showed me that.”

“I wanted to hurt you and have you at the same time.”

She squeezed his fingers again. “Solas.” Again, that pause. “Fen’Harel.” His name on her lips did wicked things to him. “I avoided you because I was furious that you took my memories without asking. If you remember, by the time you tore my shift—” He growled, warming at the memory. “—I was _very_ willing.”

“You said we couldn’t,” he reminded her. “That it was wrong.”

She let out a frustrated sigh. “Do you want me to verbally eviscerate you for being an asshole?” she demanded, voice sharp with anger. “You were. You took the most amazing thing I’ve ever experienced from me, left me cold and bruised and confused, and then you came to me in dreams and left me thinking I was toeing the line of possession.”

“Mythal served her justice by letting you remember.”

“Mythal served her justice by giving you a second chance, you idiot.” 

He stared at her, dumbfounded. And she kissed him. Her kiss was everything he didn’t deserve, full of soft gentility that traitors ought never to experience. It broke him. It drove him into her arms, wrapped him in a peace he hadn’t felt in all the long, angry years of his life, and it put something broken inside him to rights. A tiny, remarkable shemlen woman destroyed him and healed him with a single touch of her mouth to his.

Her fingers released his, and her arms wrapped around him, holding him tight as he clung to her, as he drank her in. He couldn’t remember the last time he had kissed a woman with such tenderness.

She drew back, and he stared at her mouth, slick from their kiss. Every depraved fantasy he’d ever had about her mouth came over him at once. It wasn’t in him to surrender control to another, even when the collar and leash were so sweet.

“So,” she purred, pressing herself against him, rubbing her hips against his. He settled his hands on her waist, urging her to repeat the motion, and she did. “Starry skies and sandy beaches?”

Lust whipped through him, sharpening his interest wholly on her. “I would settle for your bed,” he said, and his voice was a growl as he drove the fingers of one hand into her hair and yanked her mouth to his.

He kissed her without holding anything back. She knew who – what – he was. He didn’t have to hide that from her. So he captured her mouth with his in a ruthless assault. Her lips parted on a gasp and he sucked her lower lip into his mouth, worrying its ripeness with his teeth until she moaned and rocked against him. His cock throbbed for her, ached, and he groaned softly. This time. _This_ time.

He dragged her into his arms, fingers biting into her flesh through her clothes, and she all but climbed his body. Her legs wrapped around his waist, her arms tangled around his neck, and she stole her breath from his mouth as he stole hers.

“So strong,” she breathed into the kiss, and he laughed, the sound dark and unforgiving, as he carried her into her room. She had no idea what he was capable of, and he had every intention of showing her.

The essence of him remained unchanged. There was no hope for her for lethargic lovemaking. Whatever affection they made between them – and perhaps it was a kind of love – it would not be gentle. It would be hard and brutal, demanding and relentless. She would rise from him mottled with bruises and bites and scratches again, his scent covering her skin, and she would be _his_. The mortal, shemlen girl who had so enraptured him would forever belong to Fen’Harel.

He was going to destroy her with pleasure, and she would remember it. He was going to shatter her with his mouth and put her back together with his fingers, and she would never forget it. He was going to fill her, stretch her, assault her every sense with fire and want and need, and it would be branded on her soul for the rest of eternity.

Beside her bed, he stopped. His hands shifted on her legs as he drew away from their kiss. “Stand,” he commanded, and with eyes already glazed with lust, she obeyed. She trembled, just the slightest bit, and desire flared low in his gut, a burning heat at the base of his spine. “Undress me, _vhenan_.”

A full-bodied shudder wracked her at the endearment. Her body remembered the pleasure that came with that word. As her hands fell to his belt, all but tearing it free of the buckle, she asked, “What does that mean?”

“ _Vhenan_ ,” he growled, just to see her shiver again. A little gasp fell from her lips as her fingers clenched in the fabric of his tunic. “ _Ar lath_.” She pressed against him, and he settled his hand on the small of her back as his thigh parted hers. The heat of her was enough to burn him. “Undress me, _vhenan_ ,” he said again, his words a whip sheathed in velvet. His fingers closed on the wolf bone necklace he wore, pulling it over his head and tossing it on her bed.

She all but tore off his tunic. “You spoke Elvish to me before,” she said, her voice throaty and thick with lust.

“I did,” he agreed as she slid her hands under the high-necked shirt he wore beneath his tunic. Her fingers crept over his muscles, and she trembled still. To know that she desired him so much was indescribably erotic. He applied a gentle pressure to the small of her back, bending to whisper filth in her ear as she rubbed herself against him.

Whimpers spilled from her lips like honey, her nails scratching lightly over his nipples. Heat coursed through him, lazy and rich, and he laughed, low and dark. “What did you say?” she asked breathlessly as he helped her pull the shirt over his head.

“That I would have you on your knees before me, _vhenan_ ,” he replied, turning to watch her expression. Her lips parted, her pupils dilated. In the fading light, he read every kind of desire on her face. “That I would fuck your pretty mouth—” At that, he swept his thumb over her lips, too quickly for her to catch it with her teeth to suck. “—until you made me spill down your throat.”

“Yes,” she whispered, her fingers ghosting over his chest, following the lines of lithe muscle along his abdomen to the top of his trousers. She paused for a second, then cupped him through the fabric, running her palm down the length of his cock, and he snarled softly.

Finally, he would feel her real hand on him. At last he would have the pleasure of knowing her touch.

“Fen’Harel,” she murmured, and he captured her mouth in a brutal kiss, drinking down her moans. 

When he released her, she looked dazed. “You have not finished the task assigned to you,” he reminded her, tone firm but gentle.

Catching her lower lip with her teeth, a sight that made him catch his breath, she went to her knees before him. Her nimble fingers unwrapped the leather strips around his legs, feathering briefly over the tops of his feet. He wanted to knock her hands aside; he knew how callused and ugly his feet were from years of walking without the shemlen trappings of shoes. 

But she drew away, rising on her knees. He watched her, intent, his fingers slipping into her hair as she pulled the laces of his trousers loose. “I have imagined this so many times, _vhenan_ ,” he said, his voice ragged.

Her eyes flashed, her carriage changing ever so slightly. In this act, she would have so much power over him. And she knew it. “Tell me?” 

His laces free, she pushed his pants down his legs. His cock bobbed in front of her, hard and aching for her, and he stepped free of his pants, kicking them aside. She caught him in her left hand, ringing him with thumb and index finger. His fingers tightened on her hair as she dragged that loose hold from base to tip. The Anchor sparked with light, magic rippling across his flesh, and he groaned.

“So many times, I imagined pushing you to your knees in the middle of the Graves or the Dirth as I leaned against one of my statues and you took me into your mouth,” he murmured, watching her intently as her thumb rubbed against his tip, spreading precum over his skin. “Sometimes, you were calculated, trying to make me lose control.” Her fingertips stroked down the length of him, and he groaned again.

Callused fingertips. Just as he’d thought.

“Did I ever succeed?” 

His laughter was almost breathless. “No. I feared losing control, even in my fantasies.”

She shifted, moving closer to him. She braced her right hand pressed against his hip. Her lips parted over the head of his cock and she looked at him through thick lashes. “And other times?” she asked, breathing the words over him.

Gooseflesh ran along his skin, making it prickle and tingle as only the Fade had before. “Other times, you wanted me so badly that you sucked me without shame or reservation.”

She leaned yet closer, her eyes still on his. “So, then, Fen’Harel.” His cock twitched in her glowing hand at the sound of his name on her lips. He would never tire of her speaking it. “Do you want calculated or sloppy?” 

His nails scratched her scalp as he arched toward her, desperate to have her mouth on him. “Would you believe me if I said I did not care?” 

Her eyes flashed with feminine victory and she licked him. His world ended with the touch of her tongue. Reality couldn’t compete with any fantasy he’d ever had, and he had had so very many. Her mouth was hotter, wetter, softer than any dream he’d conjured. She slid down him as far as she could, sucking hard as she pulled back, and he couldn’t stop himself from tangling her hair around his fist.

He held onto her as she bobbed over him, licking and sucking him like she’d been born to it. She whimpered and moaned, and the sounds reverberated along his skin, sank into his bones. He closed his eyes, focusing solely on the warmth of her mouth. Her tongue laved the length of him, swirled around his head, stroked back down. What her mouth didn’t cover, her hand did. The magic of the Anchor fizzled along his skin, and she squeezed and pumped him in time with the descent of her mouth. His hand tightened in her hair, yanking against her scalp to encourage her to move faster, to take him deeper.

“ _Vhenan_ ,” he murmured, stroking her cheek with his other hand. “You will be the end of me.” There was no doubt in his mind. His life had started anew as he kept her alive in that cell, and it would end when she was gone.

Arching into her mouth, he swore softly, making a filthy oath in Elvish that would have had her gasping in indignation if she understood the words. Instead, she moaned around his cock, and the sound went straight through him, drawing his balls tight.

Her mouth was quick and clever, and she did as he had once imagined. After a lick or a stroke, she would pause briefly, assessing his response, and then she would try something new. In the span of several minutes, she knew all the things he loved most, and he made no effort to hide them from her. Her nails dragged over the skin of his hip, her hand tightened around him, her lips pulled at his flesh, and he whispered her name like a prayer.

But once she knew what he liked, her calculation dissolved. She moaned as she took him into her mouth, her saliva coating him and making the rub of her hand slick and easy. He watched her with rapt fascination, delighting in the way she tried to consume him with her mouth. She was no elf with an immortal lifespan, she knew only the press of time on her, but still she dragged out his pleasure far longer than he expected her to. 

When he felt his orgasm like a knot in his belly, he yanked her off his cock by her hair. She sucked hard as he pulled her off, and a line of saliva trailed from her mouth. It was sloppy, but he felt visceral pleasure in the sight. She’d frayed his control with her wicked tongue, left him half mad with desire for her. 

“Bed, _vhenan_ ,” he commanded, and she went, sitting hesitantly on the side. He took in the sight of her, her hair disheveled, her lips swollen and slick, and prowled toward her. “You’re wearing too many clothes.”

Her fingers flew to the toggles on her tunic, and he batted her hands away.

“Do not take this pleasure from me,” he snapped, and her hands fell to the sheets. Her fingers curled in them. 

He knelt before her, tugging her into a kiss as his fingers began working on her toggles. He freed them slowly, his fingers drifting over the skin he revealed. When he had opened her tunic enough to feel the gentle swell of her breasts, his mouth left hers, trailing over her neck, her jaw. She sighed, head falling to one side as he continued to undress her. His lips followed the path of his fingers, and he paused only to bite the rise of each of her breasts. She gasped, her breath faltering, and her hands slid over his neck. 

Drawing back, he pushed her tunic from her shoulders, watching her as it fell away. 

“You are so beautiful,” he murmured, shocking himself. She was beautiful, he knew that, but to admit it and feel no anger about it was a stunning freedom. He no longer resented her humanity. Not in any meaningful way, not when she had achieved so much. Her victory over Corypheus was the least of those. “Lay back, _vhenan_.”

She dropped to her back as he pulled off her boots. “You still haven’t told me what that means.”

“Have I not?” he inquired as his fingers pressed against the arches of her feet. She jumped, and he raked his nails over her soles. A low moan broke from her, and a feral grin lit his face. “ _Vhenan’ara_.”

She keened, her hips shifting restlessly as his fingers stole up her legs. “I want to know,” she said, a hint of complaint in her tone. That wouldn’t do at all. He stripped her breeches from her body, tossing them aside, and lifted one of her feet. They were soft, barely callused at all. He pressed his lips to the top of her foot, then to her ankle.

She shivered as he kissed up her leg, tickling the back of her knee with his tongue. “Tell me?” Her voice was breathless as he brushed his lips over her inner thigh. So close to her cunt, the scent of her arousal was almost overwhelming. It called to the beast inside of him, to the ravenous wolf that wanted to mate with her.

The dark desire to conquer her rose up within him. He wanted to take her thoroughly, in every way imaginable, so that she never looked at another with longing. He wanted to sate her every desire, fulfill her every need. When he was done with her, she would never even consider a human man for a lover – nor anyone else.

He was going to destroy her, and it was going to be glorious.

He trailed kisses up her other leg, reveling in her every gasp. Her body jumped beneath him, trembled and shook. By the time he reached her thighs again, she was quivering and gasping for air like she was drowning.

“Ah, _vhenan_ ,” he murmured, brushing one finger along the lips of her swollen cunt. She whimpered and keened, hips arching into the touch. He pulled back before she could find any satisfaction. “You are so very beautiful.”

Leaning forward, he lifted her legs over his shoulders, pulling her hips to the edge of the bed. “But what does that _mean_?” she moaned as he maneuvered her as he pleased.

“It means I am going to feast on your cunt until you scream for me.” He pressed one finger between her lips, stroking from her entrance to her clit, and she gasped. “It means I am going to devour you, that I am going to own you.” His finger slipped into her, pulling a desperate moan from her, and he exhaled lightly over her clit. “It means I am going to shatter your world so I can rebuild it with a new center.”

He touched his tongue to her clit and she cried out, her hands twisting in the sheets at her sides. 

Her taste burst on his tongue like nectar, decadent and heady, and he snarled against her. He lapped at her clit as he pressed his finger into her, tracing wicked patterns over her flesh. She cried out again and again, and each of her cries made his cock harder. 

He made love to her with his mouth, consuming her, bringing her to the precipice of orgasm and leaving her there. He read the quiver of her muscles to know when to press her and when to withdraw, listened to the song of her body to know when he should curl his finger inside her or pull it out entirely. He had her sobbing in minutes, her toes curling against his back as he feasted on her. With wicked delight, he threw her into a firestorm of pleasure and abandoned her there, forcing her to stand against the full measure of his desire. 

The sun was long gone from the horizon when he finally let her come. She screamed his name, her back bowing, her fingers tearing at her sheets. Electricity crackled along her skin, and the Veil stretched thin over them both. The heady pleasure of magic filled the room, but he didn’t stop tasting her. 

His finger withdrew, and he replaced it with his tongue, curling that inside her until she shattered again. Every candle in the room burst into flame.

“Fen’Harel!” Her reedy gasp had him beside her, pulling her into his arms, holding her against his chest. She trembled in his arms, her fragile body still alight with pleasure. He saw it in the dazed expression on her face, in the tracks her tears cut down her cheeks. “Fen’Harel.” Her fingers curled over his jaw, and he kissed her, drawing her tongue into his mouth as he settled her between his legs.

“Do you think I’m done with you yet, _vhenan_?” he asked her, his mouth brushing against hers with every word.

She simply stared at him, panting. 

“A sight every man craves,” he murmured. “His woman hot and wanting in his arms.” He turned her, drawing her back to his chest, and he banded one arm across her stomach. His legs slipped under hers, spreading her wide, and he reached between her legs to cup the obscene wetness of her cunt. 

“Please,” she whispered, trying to arch against him, to slide one of his fingers into her. Fool woman, he knew all of those tricks, and he would fall for none of them. His hand tightened on her hip.

He drew on the Fade, stretching it across her body as he slid his hand from her cunt to her belly, smearing her arousal over her skin. The sight of it fascinated him. Only his seed on her flesh would be a more erotic sight. “Feel,” he murmured into her ear, drawing again on the Fade. 

She gasped, twisting in his hold as he pressed his magic against her entrance. “What—”

“You have given yourself to a god.” The words came out in Elvish, and she whimpered. “A god does not love a woman as men do.”

Magic swirled around them, bursts of ice and tongues of fire against her skin. Her hands scrabbled against his thighs, her blunt nails biting into his flesh, and he laughed, delighted by her need, by her fervor. A tongue of fire licked her nipple but didn’t burn her. Ice burst gently against her clit but didn’t bite her.

Her head fell against his shoulder as she arched wildly in his hold, her moans perfectly senseless. 

“Are you mad with it?” he asked her, still in Elvish, and she whimpered. His magic curled around her cunt, pressing into her, filling her, and she cried out his name. In her human tongue, he promised her hours of this torture. He could watch her twist and gasp and writhe for days, but he would be merciful. He would be benevolent. He gave her the Elvish word for _please_ once again. “Hold it on your tongue like it is precious,” he commanded, nuzzling her cheek as his magic pressed into her cunt like fingers.

He felt the ripple of her, the telltale forewarning of her orgasm, and he withdrew the magic, replacing it with a shock of ice that made her keen. “Whenever you speak that word, _vhenan_ —” And at that word, she sobbed, her hips straining in his hold. “—I will make you come for me.” He waited a second, letting her lust-fogged mind make sense of that statement. “It is not a mercy.”

She choked back that word for no more than fifteen minutes as he teased her with fire and ice and electricity, as he stretched the Veil across her breasts until her nipples puckered and peaked. She choked it back as he pressed inside her, as tongues of flame and ice licked her clit, as electricity crackled sweetly over her tender muscles. She broke when he, needing to feel the slick heat of her, pressed two fingers inside her. As he promised, he let her come for him, the force of her orgasm bowing her back and leaving welts on his thighs.

“You are a worthy mate,” he snarled in her ear as he started all over again, pressing, pushing, teasing, tantalizing. It took half the time for her beg him again. She sobbed as he gave her another orgasm and made the mistake of uttering a soft, desperate _please_ a third time.

He delighted in the moment she saw the trap, her eyes going wide as she came a fourth time and then a fifth. He drew her pleasure from her as only a master could, and she was shattering with every orgasm, bits of herself slipping away. But he was there for her, whispering the stories of her victories in her ear, reminding her of who she was under her skin and in her soul.

He bound her to her flesh with his words as he broke her with pleasure. Tears of sweet agony were streaming down her face, her head lolling on his shoulder, when she finally whispered, “I’ll die if I don’t have you inside me.”

“Like this?” he queried, curling a finger into her.

She let out a ragged gasp and shook her head. “Your cock,” she moaned.

“Why should I?” 

“I—” She whimpered. Keened. Her fingers dug into his skin, but she couldn’t find words to speak.

He lifted the hand around her hips, cupping her breast. He thumbed her nipple until she was squirming and her breath was loud in his ear. “I will give you everything, _vhenan_ ,” he promised as he slipped a second finger inside her, testing her readiness. “Say these words to me, and I will place the world at your feet.” 

What terrified him, what she couldn’t possibly know, was how true those words were. He’d done it before. He’d broken the world, and he could do it again. Would do it again, if she asked. It was a thought both horrifying and incredibly arousing, knowing that the slip of a human woman in his arms could command him and he would obey.

Pressing his mouth to her ear, he whispered slow words in Elvish to her. She repeated them haltingly, gasping, her broken breathing crumbling the sweet cadence. He made her repeat the whole sentence again. She spoke it a third time without his prompting, whispering, _I do not exist except for you, desire of my heart_ , and he snapped.

The last vestige of his control went up in smoke, and he pushed her to the bed beneath him. Her legs wrapped around his hips as he thrust into her, sinking into her with a single stroke. Her nails raked down his back, and he hissed with pleasure, arching against her.

He captured her lips with his as he set a demanding pace, clutching her hips to give himself leverage. She met his thrusts with a sinuous arching of her hips, moving with a sensual grace that would bring any man to his knees. Some part of him was surprised she was cogent enough to manage movement at all. The rest of him was filled with pleasure. “You are worthy of a god, _vhenan’ara_.”

Her lips parted on a gasp. “But what—” She broke off as he thrust into her, his body pressing her into the mattress as he gave and took pleasure in equal measure. “—what does that mean?”

He turned her head and kissed her ear, the high, rounded curve of it. “Heart’s desire,” he told her.

Her body convulsed around his, as if that was enough to take her to the edge, and he groaned, loving the feeling of her cunt grasping at his cock. 

“Greedy,” he murmured, laughter in his voice.

“More,” she demanded, and he taught her the Elvish word for that, too, and the word for _yes_. She begged for completion in fractured Elvish, and each word brought him closer to the edge, dragged him nearer the drop into the abyss.

Pride kept him from giving in. As he slipped one hand between them to brush her clit, not that she needed the help, as delirious with pleasure as she was, he wondered if he could go until dawn. It would ruin her, surely, but he wanted to bring that ruin upon her. He wanted her to rise from her bed so thoroughly sated she never even looked at another with lust in her eyes.

Her desire was for him. It was his air, his sustenance, his life. His breath.

“ _Vhenan’ara,_ ” she whispered, and lust speared him, his thrusts becoming ragged and erratic.

He fought for control as her fingers pressed against the back of his head, urging him closer to her mouth. He indulged her only to swear violently when her mouth captured the tip of one ear. She sucked on him like she’d sucked his cock, her tongue tracing the shell of his ear and flicking the pointed tip.

“Don’t,” he said, his voice too ragged to be commanding.

She sucked again, harder, her arms tightening around him as though she could drag him into herself, as though she could absorb him and everything he was. Her teeth grazed the tip of his ear and he was lost.

Pleasure crashed through him, a wrecking tidal wave of feeling that dragged him beneath the surface of a vast ocean of ecstasy. He heard her soft cries, felt her body shuddering around him, pulling his orgasm from him. It felt like fire, like electric fire scouring his veins and leaving him hollowed out. Empty. 

Hot jets of his seed spilled into her as she flipped them, as she ground herself against him. He stared up at her, stunned by the fierce joy on her face. 

“Fen’Harel,” she gasped, her head thrown back. She looked like a goddess, a match for him. “ _Vhenan’ara_.”

She shuddered one last time, and the last tremor of his orgasm passed from him, leaving him breathless beneath her, his hands grasping her hips with enough force to bruise. 

Bending down, she stretched out on his chest, moving carefully so that he didn’t slip out of her, and she kissed the corner of his mouth. “Fen’Harel,” she murmured.

He rolled them so she was on her back once more, and he pulled out of her. Settling on his knees, he drew his fingers through her curls, pressed them inside her. A whimper escaped her, and it wasn’t one of pleasure. “Hush,” he said, his voice soothing. He touched her with a gentle wave of healing magic, knowing he’d used her enough to make her raw.

Withdrawing his fingers, he stared fixedly at his seed mixed with her wetness. Was fascinated by the sight of it. 

“Fen’Harel,” she murmured again. He looked at her as she reached for his wrist, taking it and bringing his fingers to her lips. A shudder wracked him as she licked their combined essences from his fingers.

When she released him, he settled beside her, drawing her into his arms and nuzzling her cheek. “I won’t be able to stay,” he said softly as she turned into him, curling against his chest. “I must… There are…” He couldn’t fathom how to explain any of it to her, so he trailed off into silence.

“Will you come back?” she asked, pressing gentle kisses to his chest and neck, her fingers brushing over the welts her nails had left. 

Hissing with pleasure, he nodded. “As often as I am able, _vhenan’ara_.”

He felt her smile against his chest. “I will wait for you,” she promised.

She drifted into sleep soon enough, exhausted, he was sure, from their lovemaking. Slipping from her arms, he dressed in silence, careful not to disturb her. She was curled on her side when he finished, her head pillowed on her outstretched arm. Her palm faced upward, as if waiting for a kiss or an offering from her beloved.

A gentle smile curled his lips. He took his wolf bone and placed it in her palm so delicately that she didn’t even move. 

It was not so hard to leave her knowing she had a part of him in her hands. Knowing that he would always return to her. He left silently, slipping into the night. There was yet one more thing he had to do.

The further he went from her, the more reality sank vicious teeth into his neck. 

By the time he reached _her_ , almost all of his joy was gone.

“I knew you would come,” she said.


End file.
